Education Amendment Bill

Earlier today, the Minister of Health outlined the strong actions taken by teachers at Rangitoto College, to protect the health and safety of students recently returned from Mexico.

 

They took actions which demonstrated compliance with the National Administration Guidelines to uphold and protect the health and safety of their students.

 

This Bill adds to that record, by fixing up some of the policy gaps which could make our students vulnerable.

 

Teacher Registrations

One of the key issues initiated from this Bill is amendments surrounding the question of registration or authorisation for teachers to teach.

 

According to the Teachers Council in 2007, an estimated 3500 teachers working in New Zealand schools are unregistered.

 

This means there were 3500 people who have not been vetted by the police or have in place a current practising certificate to show they are fit to work.

 

Even more disturbing was the admission late last year that there was an unknown number of unqualified people teaching in the country’s primary and secondary schools.

 

The admission, from the former Minister of Education, Hon Chris Carter, was that unregistered teachers are undermining the profession; and that public concern could arise if it was found there were significant numbers teaching without a current practising certificate or authorisation.

 

Mr Speaker, I find this a shocking admission.

 

When we take our car to the garage; we expect that the mechanic will be qualified to know one end of a carburater from another.

 

Similarly, if we suffer the pain of toothache, we expect that the dental surgeon will have some skill to know what to do with the decaying tooth.

 

So why should we take the risk of exposing our children to teachers who are not registered or qualified to take on the responsibility of learning and teaching.

 

Surely the education of our future leaders must be something we invest in and take seriously.

 

We must protect the professional quality of the teaching sector; we must maintain teaching standards; and we must do both in the best interests of the student population.

 

In our policy document, the Maori Party is considering the notion of moving to standards of cultural competency which comes off the Kotahitanga project. If it is that there is an acceptance of cultural incompetency in the teaching profession the Maori Party intends to address that matter seriously.

 

And so we support the moves in this Bill to enable the Teachers Council and the Ministry of Education to share data about whether teachers have current registrations in place or not.

 

This was an initiative which the former Government introduced, and Minister Tolley has now advanced into legislation. It is a move which we understand has the support of the teacher unions; of the School Trustees Association; and now the Maori Party too.

 

We believe that information matching which will ultimately lead to the potential to raise the educational performance of students should be supported.

 

We note that there are a range of fines which can be instigated for those Boards who fail to employ registered teachers. Boards who employ unregistered teachers can incur a fine of up to $5000 – while the unregistered teacher themselves can incur a $2000 fine.

 

But surely the greatest penalty will be where the educational prospects of any our students are compromised or hindered in any respect by people who lack the skills and the capacity to support and promote a love of learning.

 

Police Vetting

While the information matching proposals are supported, the amendments to place some management around the mechanisms for police vetting are a very positive development on the former Bill.

 

This Bill removes the requirement for all contractors to be Police vetted and replaces it with the requirement to vet only those are likely to have unsupervised access to children at schools and early childhood services.

 

This change has come about from a very strong reaction from the education sector to what they saw as an over-the-top approach.

 

The education sector has told us, very clearly, that such measures would create immediate problems for school communities, by setting up artificial barriers beyond which volunteers would be barred from entry.

 

Sheridan McKinley, a Ngati Kahungunu/Ngai Tahu researcher, has written about the perspectives of Maori parents as they consider their aspirations for their children’s schooling.

 

The research report, Maori Parents and Education; Ko nga Matua Maori me te Matauranga, identified a key conclusion, that how well Maori children do at school is strongly linked with how well parents and children relate to school staff.

 

Just think about the possible scenarios that could have occurred with the previous proposals. A kuia decides she has some hours on her time to assist with helping children to read at school. A young Dad on shift work, decides he will give up some valuable sleep time to help coach the school rugby team at lunchtime. Koro decides he’d like to support the kohanga reo by just turning up when he can.

 

Imagine the reaction for their whanau, when upon arriving at the school or centre they are whisked off to the office for a police check.

 

As someone who has had more than my fair share of experience in the education sector I want to make it quite clear that every school benefits from the enormous contribution of volunteers from throughout the community.

 

They run the cake stalls, the sausage sizzles, they go on camp, they help out with sports day, they help provide transport, they supervise at the school disco, they are there in big numbers.

 

As a nation, the volunteers who keep our communities afloat, contribute more than three billion dollars to the economy.

 

But this is about more than the dollars.

 

Helping our schools to be a reflection of their community is an important goal in its own right. Strong communities come from everyone feeling they have a role to play through their participation and ongoing contribution.

 

And during times of economic downturn, such a role is even more important in the growth of resilient, thriving communities.

 

So we support the amendments which minimise needless Police vetting and rapidly downscale the compliance costs that would have landed on school administrators.

 

Finally, this Bill proposes some minor changes to the current processes for teacher complaints and disciplinary measures. In essence, it enables the Complaints Assessment Committee to suspend a teacher’s practising certificate for up to three months if that teacher is being investigated on a complaint of serious misconduct by the Committee, the employer, or the Police.

 

It seems a thoroughly sensible mechanism = indeed, the possibility that a teacher could still be teaching while under investigation for serious misconduct is surely one that should not be entertained.

 

These measures are sound, they are sensible, and most of all they are effective approaches towards ensuring health and safety issues are regarded as a priority in our schools and early childhood communities.

 

For these reasons, we will support this Bill.