Protesters in Wellington last month on the day teachers' went on strike over the government's 1 percent pay offer. Photo: RNZ / John Gerritsen
The Post Primary Teachers' Association has recommended secondary teachers reject an improved pay offer.
Primary teachers in the Educational Institute union were voting on a similar offer.
The new offer included consecutive pay rises of 2.5 percent and 2.1 percent over two years for teachers at the top of the pay scale, compared with the previous offer of three 1 percent pay rises over three years.
Other teachers would get pay rises of $1300 and $1200, equivalent to 2.75 to 4 percent after two years depending on their place on the salary scale, on top of annual progression up the scale.
The government also wanted to increase the number of days teachers could be called back to work when schools are closed from 10 to 18 a year, and axe reimbursements for expenses like childcare for those days.
PPTA president Chris Abercrombie said members would vote on the revised offer until Thursday but the union's executive did not believe it was good enough.
"We believe it is insufficient to meet the needs of secondary schools, secondary students and the secondary teaching profession," he said.
"Teaching is harder than ever, but the government has still failed to meaningfully address the unmet student need in classrooms, at the same time as we face once in a generation changes to secondary school assessment and qualifications systems."
PPTA members were scheduled to begin refusing to teach different year levels of students on different days from Monday next week.
The Education Minister said the teachers' union was shifting its priorities - from pay to learning support demands - in response to the pay latest offer.
PPTA members would vote on a revised offer on Thursday but the union's executive did not believe it would be good enough.
Erica Stanford said she was disappointed at the potential rejection of a "really reasonable offer".
"We just delivered the biggest learning support budget in a generation - three quarters of a billion dollars - and addressed almost every single thing that teachers were asking for.
"More teacher aide hours, more learning support co-ordinators better ORS [Ongoing Resourcing Scheme] funding.
"We've done all the things they asked for and now to hear that it's back to learning support? It's really hard to know exactly what it is that they're after," Stanford said.
Stanford said The Public Service Commission had put "everything on the table" in negotiations with the teachers.
The Public Service Commission said 39 percent of secondary teachers and 58 percent of primary teachers earned less than $100,000 a year and a quarter of both groups earned between $100-110,000.
The commissioner, Sir Brian Roche, was overseeing this year's teacher collective agreement negotiations.
At the weekend, he said the revised offer for primary teachers was "very good" and was fiscally-responsible.
Sir Brian said primary teachers moving up the pay scale could expect further pay rises of 3.9 - 7.7 percent a year.
Meanwhile, Canterbury University maths and statistics senior lecturer Leighton Watson said he had calculated that the value of secondary teachers' pay had steadily eroded during the past 25 years when compared with the minimum wage.
He said the top-of-the-scale base salary of $103,000 was worth a bit more than double the minimum wage, down from more than three-times the minimum wage in 2000.
Teachers at the bottom of the scale now earned less than 1.5 times the minimum wage, compared with more than double the minimum wage in 2000.
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