Post Primary Teachers' Association Te Wehengarua (PPTA) negotiator Kieran Gainsford, of Auckland, announced another round of industrial action in support of its collective agreement negotiations with the Ministry of Education yesterday, he said.
Union members would continue to refuse to give up their scheduled planning and marking time to do relief teaching.
They would also not attend meetings outside regular school hours.
From next week, they would not teach certain year levels of pupils on different days, known as rostering home.
In the third week of term, starting on May 8, members planned to strike on different days in different regions.
Otago Boys’ High School rector Richard Hall said he was hoping — given the union and the ministry were going into facilitated bargaining with the Employment Relations Authority — there would be a quick solution.
The action he was most concerned about was not the full strike scheduled for May 9, but rather the rostering home, which he had experienced before in the 2000s, Mr Hall said.
Because different year levels were affected in different ways, it was quite tricky to keep on top of.
While the school was supportive of teachers getting better conditions, it would be trying to minimise disruption, Mr Hall said.
Over the last two strike days the school had stayed open and kept its hostel boys, as sending them home midweek would have been impractical.
The majority of OBHS teachers were union members and while supervision would be offered as far as practicable during the industrial action, classes could not be offered as normal.
For the upcoming strike, the school would provide resources for pupils to work from home.
Generally, parents could expect schools would try their best to limit the disruption to their children’s education but there was no getting away from the fact there would be disruption, which would likely vary from school to school.
However, he was hopeful a solution would be found before things got to that stage.
Schools and teachers were grateful to parents and the community for the support they had been given so far.
"We realise this is a really difficult time. We know that every sector is facing significant challenges — we’re no different to a lot of other sectors, so we’re very grateful for the support we’ve been shown so far," Mr Hall said.
