Oh Novopay, how I despise thee.

Hello lovely readers!

Things have been a bit quiet on the blog front for the past couple of months, what with the holidays and things. I've been catching up and preparing for the year ahead, it's been quite busy actually! On that note anyone who says that teachers get a lot of holidays is flat out of their mind if they think we spend that time fanning ourselves on a beach!

So, 2013 has arrived, but what state is the education system in? Well, not that great to be perfectly frank. There's many issues facing education right now, but one of the most pressing would have to be the Novopay saga. That's right, it's officially been branded (by me) as a saga. I may not have told you this before, my dear reader, but I am a relief teacher. If you are familiar with the Novopay debacle you'll know what that means, and you would be correct. Currently I am underpaid. I'm not exactly sure by how much, because as time goes on the issues become more and more compounded. They fixed some, but not all, of my issues from two payslips ago, but then messed up further on the most recent pay run. I know of people who have gone without pay for long periods of time, some who have been paid massive lump sums for no apparent reason and people who have had taxes taken away at incorrect rates. I am by no means the worst case, but if I didn't have a partner who can support us I would have had to borrow money to stay afloat. My landlords would probably be understanding, but they have a mortgage to pay too. I mean let's be honest; my bills don't care if my payslip was wrong, they still need to be paid.

In any other industry people would not have stood for their pay to be mucked up for this long. But teachers turn up to work each day because they know that the schools they work for are not at fault. One of the things that I find really frustrating is that if I worked in an office and my boss told me he wasn't going to pay me for the week I would tell him I wasn't going to work for the week. If I told one of my principals or relief co-ordinators that I wasn't going to work if I didn't get paid correctly it would do nothing but hurt my reputation as a reliever.

Currently we are being advised that the issues will be on-going, but don't worry, Steven Joyce (a.k.a. Mr Fix-It) is on the case. Hmmm. John Key has also announced that Hekia Parata will be keeping her job in the reshuffle he released last week. I couldn't be happier about this, and no, I'm not being sarcastic! Teachers will remember Ms Parata's predecessor, Anne Tolley. We jumped for joy when we heard Ms Tolley would be replaced; naively we thought that there couldn't possibly be someone worse than her, right? Right?? Wrong. I would fully expect that if Ms Parata were replaced her replacement would be no walk in the park either. They would implement the same policies and cause the same controversy, but with the added bonus of having a better reputation with the average New Zealander. At the moment most people, whether involved in education or not, view Ms Parata as a fairly incompetent minister. It would take time for a new person to amass the same resume of inefficiency and incompetence. So by retaining Ms Parata we are able to let National dig their own grave in the eyes of the New Zealand public.

Now, there's also been a lot of coverage in the media about the strike and I've spent a lot of time reading the comments on the articles on Stuff.co.nz. Some of the comments have been really supportive, which is fantastic, but there has also been a fair few negative comments, some of which I would like to address.

* Why don't the teachers strike during the holiday, they get so many of them!
If you work at an office would you strike after 5pm? No? Why not? Oh, that's right; because no one would care. Next question.

* They wouldn't be going on strike if they cared about the children!
Actually, it's because we care about the children that we are striking. It's because we want the absolute best for your children, we want a world class education system and we want to offer them the best learning experiences and environment we can.

* They just don't want to lose their cushy jobs!
Wow. Just wow. This type of thought comes from the same life forms who think we leave school at 3:30 and never go in during the holidays or weekends. These are the type of people who think we don't worry about our class and how we can improve ourselves to give them the best learning experiences possible. Also, when did it become unreasonable not to want to lose your job? I feel that's a pretty fair thing to be concerned about, and that's not even the reason for the strike, at least not directly. Further, if you have never tried to safely corral 28 excited 7 years olds through a busy city to reach your next excursion/swimming lesson/guest speaker then you don't get to describe my job as cushy.

*They just don't want any change at all! Obviously some school will have to merge or close!
We have stated many times that the issue is not that we don't want any schools to close, we agree that some will need to change, but we don't feel that the process has been valid. The Ministry has failed to provide the information required for schools to properly prepare their submissions. Even Ombudsman David McGee has criticised the Ministry for their handling of information, so this is not an imagined problem.

O.k, I'll stop ranting now, but hopefully you get the idea! If you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments!