Chris Abercrombie: Post Primary Teachers' Association President on the union's opposition to the Government's charter school move

There’s fiery opposition to the Government's charter schools move by the teacher's union. 

Associate Education Minister David Seymour's championing a move to convert 35 state schools to charter schools, allowing $153 million for the initiative. 

It's caused the PPTA to change its constitution to allow members who teach at charter schools to be members, despite its stance against the schools. 

PPTA President Chris Abercrombie told Heather du Plessis-Allan it's not a backtrack, and they're still opposed. 

He says the Government's forcing the conversion of schools against the teacher's will. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ppta's had an enormous change of heart on charter schools.
By the looks of things, the union has decided it
will now cover teachers who work for these essentially independent schools,
and this is a massive turnaround from railing hard against
the establishment of the schools in the first place. Ppta's
president Chris Abercrombie is with us.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Hey, Chris, good, good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
This has got to be one of the biggest turnarounds
in the history of the union, right.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Oh, I wouldn't go that far at all. I'd just
say this is responding to the situation we're in and
supporting our members.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
And how many of your members wanted this?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Oh well, our our annual conference pastor so as a
representative of all our regions in New Zealand, more than
fifty percent? Yes? Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Do you know how much more than fifty percent?

Speaker 2 (00:42):
No, I don't know how much more than fifty percent.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
This is about them wanting the better pay that's on
offer at the charter schools own.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
No. No, this is about the forced conversion of schools
against their will and our members not having a decision
in it. So we need to be there to protect them.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
But how I mean we're not. It's not going to
be more than fifty percent teachers who are affected by this.
Why are more than fifty percent of teachers worried about it?

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Well, the minister himself said he wanted eighty percent of
secondary schools to be charter schools, so it's going to
be a lot more than that. So we we're here
to protect our members. We absolutely oppose charter schools, but
it's the forced conversion of these schools on the table.
We need to be there to protect our members.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
So are you going to continue to lobby against charter schools?

Speaker 2 (01:20):
We want all we want any school charter school that's
created to be integrated back into the state system, and
we need to be needed to be there with our
members to support them.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Are you open to changing your mind? Like if your
members are working for charter schools and like, actually, Christ
this is an awesome situation. I love it, and enough
of them say that to you, Will you change your mind?

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Well, we'll always listen to the membership and we'll see
what happens. But as a stands, we don't think charter
schools are needed. We don't need them in New Zealand.
They have got a record of failure, a record of
lack of transparency, all of these issues. But we need
to be there to support our members to decide and
you make these decisions, and you know we're not going
to let the Associate Ministry of Education decide who can

(01:59):
be our member.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Chris, I would have thought that you guys should be
stoked about this because this creates more work for you,
doesn't it. I mean like this actually could potentially strengthen
the union because no longer is there this one collective agreement,
you might be rolling out multiple ones that you have
to go out and negotiate.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Now, well, that could potentially happen. We will have to
have site based agreements, but teachers will be the only
workers in New Zealand that don't have a right to
a multi employment collective agreement. Again under the Education Social
Education Minister's Law, these restrictions on us and we're busy
fighting back against it.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Good stuff, Chris, thanks very much for your time. That's
Chris Abercrombie, the PBTA president.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
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