Pay teachers what they’re worth

The government says it can’t afford to give teachers a four per cent pay rise. This is incorrect. The correct thing for them to say is, ‘we choose to not give a four per cent pay rise. We choose to spend government resources in other ways.’
Four per cent would simply counter the effect of  inflation. It’s not a real pay rise. It’s an increase in the amount of dollars so that they can continue to buy the same things they could before.
The Ministry says they “simply can’t afford” the same “generous” salary increases it has given teachers in the past few years. Generous has about as much place in this discussion as it does in Oliver Twist’s dinner. 
The government can afford to pay teachers four per cent more but it chooses not to.
It chooses to spend money on other things such as practitioners. Not General Practitioners like the ones you must see when you’re suddenly ill in a Carter sort of a way and you need to take a few months off work. But that’s another story for another week. 
There’ll be practitioners sent out to schools. They’re Ministry people so they’ll stay in hotels, travel in taxis and 737s, and submit sundry expense claims for dry-cleaning bills or flowers for their partners or renting DVDs. And wait, they’re not the people who will sit with the children. I’ve noticed that most Ministry experts don’t do this.
I asked my Economics students how they’d spend 36 million kiwis in education and you know, not one of them suggested 50 practitioners. To be fair they’d not heard of them.
When I explained that they’re education experts they asked if there really are 50 spare ones sitting around in Wellington and if there are why haven’t they been experting already and then the bell rang. 
So I was thinking. We don’t seem to have a recruitment and retention issue for MPs. Perhaps the PPTA is getting it wrong - with respect, of course.
Perhaps they should forget four per cent, forget free immunisations and forget laptops. Just ask for the same contract that MPs have.
Their sick leave seems attractive. Their perks improve after they’ve been in the job a while which is good for retention.
Here’s the guts of it. This country can’t afford to not spend more on teachers’ salaries.
Good societies come from good schools. Good schools comes from good teachers who are well supported with the time and the teaching materials to teach every student in their class. We don’t need PhDs or fat consultants’ fat reports to tell us this. It’s common sense. 
Forget about spending more on practitioners, consultants and researchers and MPs’ travel perks.
Pay teachers what they’re worth.