| Friday, June 08, 2012 9:31 AM

So is the Government backing down on the class sizes good or bad? Both.

It’s good if you believe in the fundamental premise that a Government is merely there to act on the will of the people. Arrogance and failure to listen is often a Government’s undoing. Ask Labour after three terms when they started telling us how much water was going to come out of our taps. So in that sense they’re to be commended. Enough people made enough noise to genuinely lead the Government to believe it wasn’t worth the fight.

But, and it's a big but, what if what you were arguing for was in fact a good thing, a thing that needed doing and it simply got derailed for all the wrong reasons and that in this case is exactly what happened. Improving the quality of teachers in this country is not just a good idea, it’s imperative and it’s badly overdue.

We all know it, we saw it as pupils, we see it as parents, I see it each year. We have five kids so that's at least five teachers and they all vary. In some years we have had dreadful experiences. In others, outstanding. All the Government is looking to do is get more good teachers in front of kids. That’s to be applauded and backed.

Where it came unstuck is they have no money so something had to give. Whether it was the ministry or the minister, it doesn't matter. But when the argument went from ‘it will be no more than a couple of teachers at worst’ to some schools saying ‘it will be nine’, The Government lost. It was over. All the worthiness of teacher improvement went out the window. The argument became focused on numbers, the fear mongering started, the unions joined in, the students blocked some intersections, the coalition partners freaked out, and that was that. So in this case good policy got lost in the distraction.

What most of us really would have liked to have seen may or may not ever come to fruition. If the Government really wants better teachers, it will need to wait until they have money and God knows when that will be. Although I was one of the many who was not convinced that big classes were a good idea, what I can’t support - never have, never will - is the union’s self interest in all of this. They can and will call this a victory.

But the very reason the Government wanted to improve teaching is because the unions have held the quality of teaching back. Held it back by accepting mediocrity, held it back with their wacky view that all teachers are the same and therefore need paying the same, held it back by deluding themselves into believing that what we have is as good as it can be.

My great hope here is this bit is the battle - Unions 1, Government 0. But the war on quality is not yet over.