Tom

Pay equity legislation could save 'billions' for government - PM Christopher Luxon said the upcoming Budget was not the motivation for rushing through the legislation.

It turns out we should just systematically under pay women to fix the budget. Hell, why not cut even more from salaries in traditionally underpaid sectors like teaching and nursing? Think of the savings!

Popping up to say that the Min of Education have open for consultation the new draft framework for relationships and sex education in schools. They've cut out almost every mention of gender and gender diversity. Inside Out have a great guide to submitting here:

insideout.org.nz/make-an-urge...

People are appointed for three years, so it isn't surprising to see some people opting for re-appointment and others not. Prebble has resigned though, which is different.

Richard Prebble: Why I’ve resigned from the Waitangi Tribunal OPINION: I will not participate in turning the Treaty into a socialist manifesto.

Pretty clear that Prebble joining the Waitangi Tribunal was always just a cheap stunt, setting him up to resign dramatically and claim that the Tribunal is corrupt. Fortunately it looks like he's shouting into the wind, the racist historical revisionism of ACT and Hobson's Pledge is losing.

"You've got to bear in mind there's 143,000 of these meals going out every day. That's a very significant number of meals. It's a couple of million already this year and as a result we've got it right just about every time. In this case it was wrong and we've done something about it."

David Seymour:
"Sure, some of the kids have been eating melted plastic. But what about all the kids who haven't been fed melted plastic? Why isn't the media talking about them?"
(I'm paraphrasing but barely)

www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

Some parents can afford it but are neglectful. Some parents can afford it but aren't out of bed in the morning to make lunch. Some parents can afford it but spend the money on other shit. That's obviously a minority but even if that were the case for all of them, who cares? Their kids still need kai

Photo of Chris Luxon and Judith Collins in front of microphones with the news headline beneath "Live: 'Go make a sandwich' - Luxon on school lunches".

Whether parents can afford to make their kids a Marmite sandwich is irrelevant. Lunches were introduced because kids didn't have food, the reason doesn't matter. Do we accept responsibility as a society for making sure our kids have kai? That should be a pretty simple question for us to answer.

Photo of a tino rangatiratanga flag flying in front of the New Zealand parliament

www.tewhakatere.auckland.ac.nz/mandated-tes...

✌️

Tax Calculator - Budget 2024 - 30 May 2024

Tax cut calculator is here:
budget.govt.nz/taxcalculato...

You can compare to what they campaigned on here:
x.com/coughlthom/s...

British PM Rishi Sunak calls UK national election for 4 July Ending months of speculation the British PM stood on Downing Street in pouring rain.

"Labour don't have a plan" says the guy who didn't even check the weather forecast.

Very frustrating to watch UK Labour sleepwalk into government without any kind of ambition or transformational goals though. Basically just tory-light.

The scariest driver of school non-attendance: more parents who just don’t care Parents in a UK study knew attendance rates had gone down. The problem was, they didn't care. Could the same be true here?

This aligns with my anecdotal experience of an attitude shift that happened after the lockdowns. It varies, but the perception that "a few days here and there don't matter", viewing start time as flexible, etc, seem much more widespread now.

Charter schools might increase government costs, deliver marginal benefits - Cabinet papers Charter schools will likely get higher per-student funding than most state schools, and evidence of their efficacy is mixed.

The $153m is just to set up and administer the schools, doesnt include the per-student funding.

We know from previous charter schools here that they use this startup funding to provide levels of service (salaries, pastoral care etc) that their business model can't actually sustain. Cooks the books.

The treaty principles bill is precisely an attempt to change NZ's constitutional law to undermine the Waitangi tribunal. They aren't even being discrete about it.

'Increasingly activist' Waitangi Tribunal faces its future under renewed attack from senior ministers David Seymour has renewed attacks on the what he says is an 'increasingly activist' Tribunal as it faces questions about its future.

How long can David Seymour keep branding as "activists" all these institutions established to defend people's rights? Surely before it will start to become obvious that the problem is his policy strips people of rights.

Yeah his online culture wars stuff spilled over and fortunately it went down like a lead balloon

All of this and also… a major reason for the importance of school lunches is being missed in discussions… to compensate for any potential nutritional deficiency poor kids might have in their diet at home.

This is an EXACT repeat of the situation that cost Clare Curren her job as minister for broadcasting in 2018. Failure to add something to a diary, lying that it was because it was an ad-hoc meeting, and then it being revealed as a pre-arranged meeting.

Totally different standards nowadays it seems.

It'll be interesting to see how they manage it if it does eventuate! Hopefully they'll just decline to avoid bad press. Huge issues involved in removing requirements for trained/registered teachers, especially when schools will likely have to prioritise spots for disadvantaged/more vulnerable kids.

Yeah there didn't used to be much difference other than bulk funding and untrained/unregistered teachers. Now that public schools have all these extra requirements around minimum hours of reading/writing/maths, and structured literacy etc, there's a bigger difference

That's odd, it isn't paywalled for me (and I'm not logged in or anything). How about in The Press? www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/3502...

Opinion piece in The Post, headline: "Public schools, not charter schools, need support" by Tom Pearce. Featured image "The children of South Auckland Middle School in a photo from 2017; the school was a partnership (charter) school or kura hourua opened under the previous model. Tom Pearce acknowledges that these offered benefits for some groups, including Māori and Pacific children."

I wrote about David Seymour's pet charter school project in The Post. Sets out the evidence that charter schools just don't work; any benefits they provide (higher pay, better pastoral care) can and should be delivered through the public system.

www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/3502...

Oh right, then yeah for sure, the new wave of fascism is born out of the decay of neoliberal capitalism, and the intentional destruction of public education that Seymour is advancing with charter schools is a big part of that.

Nah they've been around for ages, they're not part of some sort of NZ version of Hitler youth. Much more likely they're just kinda oldschool authoritative discipline people, and the school has an explicit focus on duty, self-discipline, personal improvement/responsibility and shit.

I don't think they're cookers or anything, but yeah I don't know the specifics of their curriculum/approach.

Yeah Vanguard Military School, they call their students "recruits" and get them to do "physical training" and stuff

It's not just that. Seymour says schools need this freedom to innovate and improve, while Stanford says we need every teacher using the exact same approach in literacy and numeracy for every child. It's ridiculous stuff.

I know, between this and the standardised testing it's like we're right back in 2011.

I've got a piece that Stuff have agreed to run somewhere (dont know where yet) about them. It's going to be a harder fight this time but hopefully we can keep opposition alive.

Doubts about value, results from charter schools - education figures Reintroduced charter schools will be tightly monitored, but a lack of transparency in reporting was a key criticism they faced last time around.

Charter schools want to have their cake and eat it too. Things like bulk funding and ability to employ unregistered teachers only offer benefits because the rest of the sector holds the line on funding, pay, standards etc.

It's just privatisation, not even by stealth.

The party of small government!