The Education Minister is quickly running out of patience with the primary teachers' union.

Primary school principals and teachers are going ahead with rolling strike action this week, without considering the Government's latest offer - made late on Thursday.

NZEI told Newstalk ZB the offer came too late for it to cancel venue bookings for union meetings.

Education minister Chris Hipkins told Mike Hosking the offer was good, and the union's approach is disappointing.

"I'm disappointed. The Government's been doing everything it can to avert the strike this week and I'm really disappointed the union's going ahead with it."

He said the union is being unreasonable but says he will continue to work with the teachers. 

"The Employment Relations Authority has found that the Government's offer is a very reasonable offer and that the expectations of the union are unreasonable."

"We can't continue to put more money on the table, we have put about as much money on the table as we are able to, there really isn't any room for movement," Hipkins said.

"If they come back to and say they want to reconfigure the offer, for example, they want a lower may rise and more classroom release time, we are happy to consider that."

The teachers are raising "a lot of legitimate issues" around workload and conditions but "the Government can't fix it all at once", he said.

"These negotiations have been a little frustrating, in the sense that the union has set out their stall, they have said what they are claiming, and they haven't been willing to budge at all."

"Now their claim was worth several billion dollars and no Government was going to be able to deliver everything at once, and we have gone as far as we can to meet their claim this round."

He said the union's claim has been increasing throughout the negotiations.

"They haven't moved at all, in fact, their claim increased during the negotiation. While we were trying to move towards them they were moving further the other way."

Hipkins said the Government is doing its best.

LISTEN ABOVE AS CHRIS HIPKINS SPEAKS WITH MIKE HOSKING