Winter rebellion breaks class size cuts

 Teaching support staff campaigning for pay increases in 2009.

A winter rebellion in schools over class size cuts has completely broken National's budgeted removal of teachers from primary, intermediate and secondary schools.

Anna Lee, a West Auckland teacher and activist  in the New Zealand Educational Institute told Socialist Aotearoa, 'There is a euphoric mood in the teachers' union today but there are still many issues to address. The backdown on class sizes does show the strength of combined action of parents, the teaching profession and wider community.'

'The government are saying that their changes are to help the least successful children. But their increases to class sizes, closing special schools like Westbridge, cutting specialist subjects at intermediate school and terminating the learning support teachers jobs will do nothing but harm the children who find it most difficult to learn at school.'

'The current government's policy on education like national standards, performance pay, league tables, charter schools, public private partnerships can only be detrimental to New Zealand's quality public education which is currently fourth in the OECD across literacy and numeracy.'

'Today's victory shows that teaching professionals, academics, parents and the wider community have the capacity to stop these attacks which are detrimental to all children and an affront to tax payers who will be paying for private profit not for children to learn and flourish.'

-Socialist Aotearoa