11. DAIL JONES (NZ First) Link to this
to the Minister of Education
What action, if any, is he taking to improve resources and on-the-job training for trainee teachers following the release of a Ministry of Education review that found a “significant minority” of teachers gaining full registration fell short of the required standard?
Hon CHRIS CARTER (Minister of Education) Link to this
There is no Ministry of Education review that made that claim, but the Labour-led Government is always seeking ways to improve the quality of New Zealand teachers. In September 2007 the Government released a discussion document on initial teacher education entitled Becoming a Teacher in the 21st Century. One hundred and four submissions were received, and I am expecting advice soon from the Ministry of Education about those submissions. I need to remind the House that the vast majority of New Zealand teachers are among the best in the world—as demonstrated by the high achievement of New Zealand students in the recent international OECD rankings, where our students ranked highest in the English-speaking world in mathematics, science, and literacy.
Gordon CopelandI raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. The Minister’s response puzzles me, somewhat. All of us know that we have to produce evidence to the Clerk’s Office for primary questions. The member’s primary question mentioned a review by the Ministry of Education, but the Minister said there was no such review. That seems to me to be out of order.
Hon Dr Michael Cullen Link to this
The member is required to produce authentication, which, undoubtedly, the member did, and that authentication would have been a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald. But that story is incorrect, as the Minister pointed out. It is not actually a review, in the same way that when that paper described, I think it was, 42.9 percent of Māori voters as wanting to go with the National Party, it was describing four people out of seven in its poll.
Madam SPEAKERIs the Minister concerned that the report Becoming a Teacher in the 21st Century— which was presented by the previous Minister of Education, Steve Maharey, and presumably is a report from the previous Minister—is considerably alarming, and that as many as several thousand graduate teachers have entered the teaching workforce since 2000 after receiving this Government’s “variable quality” teacher education; and would he agree that if a “significant minority” of those new teachers have competency issues, then parents should rightly have concerns about the quality of the education their children are receiving?
We have received 104 submissions on the report that the member quoted from. We are assessing those submissions at the moment. The New Zealand Herald seemed to cut and paste from the submissions, which were on the website of the Ministry of Education, and then purported that to be an exclusive, which is rather an astonishing story.
Hon Marian HobbsIt has taken a number of very important initiatives. In addition to reviewing the initial teacher education, our Government has been very active in supporting beginning teachers. The steps that we have taken include a beginning teacher time allowance to release new teachers for professional development; the introduction of the specialist classroom teacher position responsible for the induction of new teachers; and the establishment of the New Zealand Teachers Council, with a wide mandate to improve teacher standards. Just recently, for example, the council issued new graduating teacher standards for trainee teachers, which are designed to lift professional standards. We have increased the allowances paid to tutor teachers, which encourages people to become mentors for beginning teachers.
Te Ururoa Flavell Link to this
Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Kia ora tātou. What action will the Minister be taking towards the recommendation from the Education and Science Committee that “Teachers should be awarded full registration after two years’ employment only if they have demonstrated that they are able to raise consistently the achievement of their students.”?
I am looking very carefully at the inquiry that the select committee has done into making the school system work for every child. I want to assure the member, though, that we have in place already very good criteria for teachers to have their professional competencies checked. Every teacher in New Zealand, every year, undergoes a competency test. There are three levels: beginning teachers, fully registered teachers, and experienced teachers of over 5 years’ service. So there are lots of checks and balances in place to make sure that we get the very best quality of teaching and learning in our schools. As I said in my primary answer, that is evidenced already by the very high scores that New Zealand students achieve in international comparisons.
Would the Minister consider introducing an even better scheme—namely, a student loan abatement scheme—to encourage qualified New Zealand graduates to enter and remain in the teaching profession here in New Zealand and not go overseas, as a means of reducing these problems; if not, why not?
That is a very interesting idea, and I myself was a graduate who was bonded under that type of system. We are looking at a variety of ways to encourage New Zealand graduates to stay in New Zealand. One very encouraging thing, of course, is that they do not pay interest on their student loans if they stay in New Zealand.
Te Ururoa Flavell Link to this
Is the Minister aware of the comments of Professor Mason Durie in describing the disparity between the achievement of Māori and non-Māori as a “long-term education debt”, and what investment will the Minister be making into teacher training in order to rectify that debt and prevent it from translating into the wasted resource of continued poor outcomes in Māori education?
Considerable investment has already taken place to try to lift the achievement of all New Zealand students—not least of all the extra $4 billion that the Government has invested in education in the 8 years that Labour has been in Government; and not least of all the 5,000 extra teachers we have put into New Zealand schools, the 55,000 new classrooms, the 36 new schools; and so it goes on. There has been a lift in the achievement of Māori and Pasifika students, but the member is quite right: there is still a way to go to get all of our students, particularly those from the Māori and Pacific communities, to achieve their full potential. Schools Plus aims to do that.