The student actions followed a June 10 announcement by the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) that 75 percent of its members had rejected the government’s latest pay offer in a national ballot. The high school teachers’ union said that it would implement a ban on after-school and weekend sports and cultural activities as the next step in the teachers’ 14-month fight for a contract.

Initial media reports sought to portray the students’ actions as protests against the teachers’ pay campaign, using the fact that some students were responding to the disruption to student sports events and cultural activities that the teachers’ ban would entail. However, as the spontaneous actions snowballed nationwide, placards and chants on the demonstrations soon made it overwhelmingly clear that the high school students supported the teachers’ pay demands, and that their anger was directed at the government.

"Now we know our ABC, give our teachers more money!" read one sign at Westlake Girls High School in Auckland June 14 where 150 mainly 14- to 15-year-old students left their classrooms to hold a roadside demonstration. "We’re behind our teachers all the way," students at the action told the Militant.

Some of the protests over June 13–14 reported by the media included a demonstration of 300 students from several schools in the central square of Christchurch. Elsewhere in the city, up to 600 students from Papanui and Burnside high schools held a public march.

In Wellington, 1,000 students rallied at a Lower Hutt intersection, and up to 500 students from Paraparaumu College marched for more than two hours to link up with 200 protesters at Kapiti College. A 100-strong contingent from Waitakere College in Auckland visited three other high schools in the area, urging students to join the walkout.

In Palmerston North, the June 14 Manawatu Evening Standard reported that 1,300 students from five high schools rallied in the city square, "packed together in a six-deep, shouting phalanx that reached a window-rattling crescendo when horn-tooting supporters drove by.... Awatapu [College] Maori students led a haka [traditional war dance] just before the protest wound down, shouting defiance at Education Minister Trevor Mallard." Two of the student strike organizers, Allanah Pirie and Tara Syme, said they were proud to be involved and that the unity achieved within and between the schools was "primo."

Actions took place at many other schools and in many other towns and cities throughout the country.

Reactions among teachers to these events were mixed. Some endorsed the students’ actions, but others tried to prevent them. A student from Epsom Girls Grammar School in Auckland, where 600 students held a one-hour demonstration on a school field, told the New Zealand Herald she was "really shocked the teachers didn’t appreciate us striking for them." At Paraparaumu College, 500 students chanted, "Hell no, we won’t go!" when teachers asked them to return to class.  
 
Concern over ‘anarchy in the streets’
Officials of the PPTA expressed alarm at the wave of student protests. National president Jen McCutcheon told news reporters, "We never envisaged things would go this far.... Our members across the country are very concerned about the anarchy that has hit the streets." Several high school principals echoed this concern. "This is mob rule and you can’t have that," Papanui High School principal Denis Pyatt told the Press.

In February, 56 percent of teachers nationwide voted down a deal offered by the government that had been agreed to by the PPTA’s national officers. The latest government offer, which the PPTA officials had also accepted, had proposed a special temporary payment for extra work teachers are required to perform implementing a new examination system, and a 5.5 percent wage increase over three years, which teachers point out doesn’t even keep pace with the rate of inflation.

The PPTA had announced that to press its contract fight it would initiate a nationwide "rostering home" action, under which teachers would refuse to teach a particular class each day. But on June 17, the day the action was due to begin, PPTA national officials called it off. Announcing the decision, McCutcheon said she hoped this would "take some heat out of the situation," saying, "We don’t want a repeat, or worse, an escalation of the student protests last week."

Despite this, student protests continued into a second week. The widespread support by students for the teachers’ pay claim reflects a wider sentiment among working people against the erosion of education, health care, and other social services under successive governments over the past two decades.

"It’s up to the government to cough up more money for schools," 16-year-old Mathew Bentham told the Militant June 17 during a lunchtime protest by 60 students at Selwyn College in Auckland.  
 
 
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