The principal and all but a couple of teachers at a primary school were happy with the introduction of National Standards.
Then the people turned up to train them and mixed with the training they had a lot of criticism of the introduction of the standards.
How unprofessional is that?
As former States Services Commissioner Mark Prebble told Kathryn Ryan:
“Public servants have to implement the policies of the government of the day
Many people come to government to try to support a good cause. They don’t realise the one who has to determine which good cause is to be supported is the democratically minister of the day. . . .
A key part of the role of senior public servants is to explain to them well it is the minister who has to take the heat in public about that and the public servant really isn’t just employed to follow their own interests and if they want to follow their interests they can go and work in the private sector like anyone else. . .
. . . No public servant should be zealous about the particular cause they’re interested in. They should be zealous about democracy and respecting the law. . .”
The public service must be apolitical. . .
The people who visited the school were paid from the public purse to help implement government policy but instead were doing their best to sabotage it.
If it happened at one school, how many others also found the people sent to help were advancing their own cause rather than giving the professional development the teachers sought and how often does this happen with other policies?
We’ve spent this week with a group of farmers. Each time tenure review was raised the glacial pace at which it proceeds was criticised.
You could be excused for wondering if this is a deliberate policy on the part of some of the public servants involved in the hope that they can delay the process until the government changes.