Falling off my Bike

I remember trying to act cool becuase my friend was with me. I was biking erratically moving my handle bars left and right really fast. Well, during one of the movements I pushed a little to far and the front wheel jack knifed causing the bike to flip and for me to go flying over the handle bars and skid across the allyway on my tummy. My shirt had come up during the fall so my tummy was scrapping directly on the pavement. I got a huge graize. I remember running home to mum crying and and having to lay on my back in pain while she picked little pebbles out of my tummy.

Good times.

Fish and Chips

Machines did most of the work. We had to; carry 20 kg bags of potatoes from storage to the back room, tip the bags into a pealer, empty the pealer and cut off and crappy bits before shoving them into a chopper.

We got paid $1 per bag and we would do between 4 – 6 bags after school every day. It took about 40 mins every day.

The pay was bad. We always stunk of fish and lard. But I got to work with my best friend and get pretty much all the free fish and chips I wanted, so I remember it fondly.

Bill English striking a blow against children in New Zealand.

As it stands now Centres get different amounts funding from the government depending on the percentage of (ratio-ed) staff they have that are qualified and registered Early Childhood Education teachers. So if you have 80% qualified teachers you get so much funding, if you have 100% then you get more. That extra money goes to classroom materials and staff wages, as you can imagine a qualified teacher gets paid more than an unqualified one.

Now the new 2010 budget changes this by removing the 100% incentive. Therefore to get the new maximum funding (equivalent to the old 80% incentive) a centre is only required to have 80% qualified teachers. Now, just think about this for a minute. This is some scary shit. Let me break it down for you.

Early Childhood Centres are businesses just like any other. They need to watch their bottom line. They need to make a profit, some are under more pressure than others (you know the ones… the big name ones on every corner who have stockholders). In order for a centre that currently employs 100% qualified teachers to stay at the same level of profit they do now under the new budget they have two options.

One, fire 20% of their qualified staff and hire people with no experience who will work for minimum wage. This of course results in a weaker education system for your young children. With no incentive for uneducated staff to study. In fact incentive for them not to study as it might just lead to their unemployment.

Two, increase the cost of sending a child to their centre. Labour’s education spokesman, Trevor Mallard, said the $100 million shortfall in ECE funding amounted to about $25 a week per parent. That’s a lot, more than your probably going to be getting in tax cuts!

This is where it starts to get really scary. Once all the Centres go down one of these two paths that leaves parents with a choice, a choice many of them have no real say in. Send your child to an expensive Centre where the teachers are all qualified and know how to professionally deal with your child’s needs during their most important and influential learning period, 0 to 5 years old. Or send them to a cheaper Centre where 80% qualified teachers is enough and hope your kid doesn’t fall through the cracks somewhere along the line.

Of course parents and whānau that live in lower socio-economic areas aren’t really going to have a choice are they? Which leads to yet another way to increase the gap between the haves and the have-nots. That’s right National, make sure that even if your under 5 years old, if you don’t have the money you don’t deserve the same level of education as people who do.

Scared yet? I am.

Below is the full Chistian Side Hug video for your viewing pleasure:

Click here to view the embedded video.