Herald debunks PPTA claim

How excellent to see a media outlet investigate a claim made, rather than merely report it. The Herald reports:

The head of the secondary teachers’ union has claimed teachers deserve a bigger pay rise than police because nobody is queuing up to be a teacher – but Herald inquiries have found the claim does not stack up.

Universities have reported significant increases in the numbers applying to become secondary teachers over the past two years, which most attributed to the recession prompting people to retrain in areas such as teaching because of job security.

Most schools of education have had at least double the number of applicants for the spaces available. This year, Auckland University had 905 applications for the 340 places available.

So the claim there are no queues is in fact completely untrue. Not only is there a queue, it has doubled recently and less than 1 in 2 in the queue will even get in.

Post Primary Teachers’ Association president Kate Gainsford made her “no queues” claim after Finance Minister Bill English said the union needed to explain to nurses, civil servants, police and doctors why teachers deserved double the increase they had settled for.

The salaries of nurses, police and teachers are usually comparable.

Ms Gainsford’s response was that there was a queue wanting to become police officers.

“There is no queue for people wanting to become secondary school teachers. That is the problem, and we don’t want that to become a crisis.”

Problem solved. There is a queue and there is no crisis. You can call the strike off now.