Gower says pay good teachers more

Patrick Gower writes:

Now the teachers union and the Government are at war – we haven’t had a strike for 25 years.

I don’t blame the teachers here. They are a taonga and every one of them deserves more.

But I do blame the teachers’ unions and repetitive Governments for not having the courage or the imagination to introduce a teachers’ pay system fit for New Zealand in 2018.

A modern New Zealand needs a much more modern way to incentivise teachers to come in and stay in the job.

“Performance pay” is a dirty word and people seem to want to make it some sort of alt-right assault.

That seems like a lazy argument to me. This is not about politics anymore – it is about attracting and keeping good teachers.

People just don’t want to go into jobs where they get paid pretty much the same their entire lives and have to fight the Government every few years to get a halfway decent rise.