Last Saturday, the primary teachers’ union NZEI rallied more than 10,000 supporters all over the country to ‘fight the GERM’ and inoculate against a disease taking the world by storm. GERM stands for the Global Education Reform Movement, a term coined by Pasi Sahlberg, the renowned Finnish expert in international education reform.

So what exactly were teachers protesting against on Saturday? Everything in education from partnership (charter) schools to national standards, league tables, and performance pay.

And what were they protesting for? It’s difficult to say. In last week’s New Zealand Herald, Professor Peter O’Connor, a fierce opponent of partnership schools, put it like this: “What has been lost sometimes in the battles over the past four years has been a clear articulation of what teachers are fighting for, rather than against.” He then explained what they were fighting for – the state should provide “excellent schools of choice for families in local communities."

New Zealand does have excellent schools of choice, but the system is failing students at the margins: two in five (43%) students from schools in low-decile communities are leaving school without a basic education (NCEA Level 2). We need innovative approaches in education because the status quo is not working for all.

The teachers who rallied on Saturday (as well as the majority who didn’t) are in the classroom every day teaching kids, and most care deeply about education. As such, they have a tremendously important voice in education debates and hold legitimate concerns about the proposed policies. The challenge for teachers, collectively or individually, is not to automatically resist change or dismiss ideas outright on ideological grounds but to fairly consider, debate, and propose innovative solutions to improve the system. A greater challenge for them is to concede that the system as a whole is not working for all.

While adults entrench themselves into ideological corners, students wait for an education. Yet, it seems everyone is fighting for the same thing – an excellent and equitable education system. A solutions-focused approach could see gems, not GERMS, in education.