Several Milford School NZEI union member teachers took to the street yesterday to join NZEI members from across Auckland on their march up Queen Street in a peaceful protest at the current teaching and learning conditions in New Zealand. Seeing the massive turnout of teachers, many of whom had their children with them, was heartening.

Our strike action follows the unanimous rejection, across the country, of the Ministry of Education’s terms for our Collective Agreement. It was felt that the only way to make the government sit up and take notice was to strike. Striking was not an easy decision to make, but we strongly believe that your children are worth it.

Our strike action was not only for teachers’ pay to be addressed in line with the cost of living rises, as well as gaining equity with secondary teachers’ pay. We have been negotiating for smaller class sizes for several years as we recognize that the more students we have in our classes, the less time we have to give them individually. This profoundly affects allowing our tamariki to thrive rather than just survive. We have also been negotiating for increased funding for learning support to help address learning challenges for some of the children in our care. Finally, we need the issue of classroom release time addressed. Many teachers work more than 60 hours a week. We spend our evenings, our weekends and our holidays planning, preparing and participating in Professional Development. One of the placards that rang painfully true for me was held by a little girl. 

It read: My mum is a teacher, so she doesn’t have time for me.

We appreciate the difficulties this day might have presented to our school community. Thank you for your flexibility and support for our teachers and all the children in our care.