The Western Bay of Plenty's chairperson of the Post Primary Teachers' Association, Jason Smythe, is refuting claims by the Ministry of Education that secondary school teachers earn an average salary of $71,000.
Jason Smythe says you don't need to be a maths teacher to figure out the average teacher salary is less than $71,000.
Negotiations between the Ministry and teachers broke down when the PPTA asked for a 4.5 per cent pay rise and better working conditions.
After teachers across New Zealand carried out a one day strike on September 15, the two parties are circulating information to get public opinion on their side.
Jason says the Ministry's claim that the average secondary school teacher earns $71,110, is "blatant misinformation".
"The starting salary for a secondary teacher with four years training is $45,000 and if those teachers pass an annual appraisal based on professional performance standards, they can progress to the sum of $68,000," says Jason.
"You do not have to be a maths teacher to see that no matter how hard you try you cannot get an average of $70,000 from those figures."
He says the Ministry's average includes principals, who earn $150,000 or more in larger schools, isolated allowances and hard to staff allowances in a small number of schools.
"All of these are additional payments received by a minority of teachers. For them to call it an average is misleading."
Ministry of Education manager education workforce, Fiona McTavish, says the $71,110 figure is "absolutely plain and correct".
"The Ministry calculated the figure using the teacher salary payroll data of 7 April 2010.
"The total base salary bill for secondary teachers for that fortnight's pay was $46 million. The total allowances bill for secondary teachers was $4.5 million."
She says the Ministry came up with the figure after dividing the total pay for the 18,522 secondary school teachers on the teacher payroll.
"This is very simple maths, and we hope this explanation clears up any misunderstanding."
4 comments
Pay for preformance
Posted on 26-09-2010 12:37 | By Pat
How would these teachers feel about a preformance pay deal. Good one make a good income Great ones make a great income and the no good ones... , Well Burger king is hireing
seems a bit
Posted on 26-09-2010 13:03 | By morepork
As an ex-teacher myself, I have some sympathy for Jason's position. In my day it would have been unthinkable for teachers to go on strike; instead, when it became untenable, we simply left the profession. The confusion here is between an arithmetic mean and an "average". The Ministry has provided a mean and called it the "average". It isn't. "The term ‘average' is used to express that something is statistically the norm. It would mean that a value is expected, middle, usual or common. The ‘average' represents a value that would best represent a sample." (Read more: Difference Between Average and Mean | Difference Between | Average vs Mean http://www.differencebetween.net/science/difference-between-average-and-mean/#ixzz10aZ5zfxA) It seems very appropriate to me that the Ministry would provide a mean; the whole way in which they are dealing with teachers could be considered mean.
muzza
Posted on 26-09-2010 22:37 | By Muzza
It is public domain what the teaching salaries are. The top step on the basic scale is $68,000. There teachers who are managers, with units of responsibility that have allowances, and each unit is worth up to $4,000. Some Deputy Principals in Tauranga Colleges would get around $100,000 with base salary and 8 or so units as allowances. And as Jason Smythe relates,the Principals get up to $150,000. It would appear that when one includes all the salaries/allowances of Managers and Principals it averages out at $71,110. However,the ordinary teacher who has no position of responsibility(probably at least half the staff in a school such as OTC,TBC,TGC) can not get more than $68,000.
Bad Timing
Posted on 27-09-2010 12:32 | By Honedaman
I think that whether or not the teachers should be getting a 4.5% increase is irrelevant given the current economic times, the country is slowly coming out of a huge recession and tens of thousands of people are either out of work or or not getting a pay increase at all. John Key is right when he says that the teachers and the PPTA are out of touch with reality. There seems to be a lack of patriotism on the part of the teachers, and as for the PPTA, well they're just trying to justify their existence
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