Education Minister Erica Stanford says sweeping changes to the Teaching Council and wider education system will be debated in Parliament this week as amendments to the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill move to the Committee of the Whole House stage.
The proposed reforms aim to strengthen accountability, improve child safety protections and modernise key parts of the education sector. A major focus is the Teaching Council, with five amendments designed to overhaul its governance and regulatory functions following critical findings from the Debbie Francis review and a Public Service Commission inquiry.
The changes would place child safety at the centre of the Council’s statutory purpose, tighten reporting and monitoring requirements, and require the organisation to give effect to ministerial policy directions while retaining independence over individual decisions.
The reforms would also replace the current governance structure with a minister-appointed board of between seven and nine members, while allowing ministers to remove board members in a similar manner to other Crown entities. Term limits for the Council’s chief executive are also proposed.
Stanford said the recent reviews exposed serious weaknesses within the Teaching Council, including governance failures, procurement shortcomings and a lack of clarity around its role as a system regulator.
“I am deeply concerned by the Francis Review finding that child safety is not clearly centred as the Council’s purpose,” Stanford said.
She said the reforms were intended to strengthen the Council’s ability to protect students and maintain teaching standards.
Additional amendments would introduce clearer rules for homeschooling, including conditions families must meet to retain exemptions from school enrolment requirements.
School hostels would also be required to follow the same legal standards for physical restraint as schools, in a move aimed at improving student safety and wellbeing.
Image credit: Giulia Squillace
How do you protect students from the schools when legislation give the education department and teaching council more power over parents.
To Fix the education system all you need to do is get rid of all the looney leftist that want to teach kids WHAT to think and replace them with people who want to teach them HOW to think.
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“…Additional amendments would introduce clearer rules for homeschooling, including conditions families must meet to retain exemptions from school enrolment requirements.”
RED FLAG!!!
So this is what; the eighth attempt to ‘fix’ the MoE???
Quite frankly, the MoE, NZQA and NCEA and it’s replacement needs to be scrapped, and the schools reformed to reflect North America with High School Diplomas, and summer courses offered in the event a subject is failed over the school year, or if a student just wants to get ahead and graduate early.
The International Baccalaurate Diploma would be a good place to start…
And teachers need to be hired to teach the subjects that they hold their degrees in, and not sent to a ‘Teachers College’ that diminishes specialised knowledge and focused subject matter.
But for many of us, we’re now out of the incarceration program known as ‘school’, where stabbings, bullying, and bias were all part of the MoE’s taxpayer-funded Gravy Train…where the bureaucratic dogs have slurped-up everything they could in benefits, grants, and taxpayer funding…
Compare….
https://repository.duke.edu/dc/adviews/dmbb43208
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qmOLwVybUI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRDDs7owcro
Erica Stanford knew full well the problems within the education system here; she knew about it because I SENT THEM TO HER, and I NEVER GOT A RESPONSE!
Here’s an example:
https://www.amazon.com/Swimming-Cesspool-Gregg-Smith
“I never expected to be ATTACKED for trying to make someone’s life richer by sharing my knowledge of mathematics with him, yet that’s exactly what I encountered in Dannevirke.”
Gregg Smith never failed at anything. He attended the US Air Force Academy, earned degrees in mathematics and engineering, lived and worked in seven different countries, and even conquered the art of clowning. But his textbook style work subtitled, “An American Teacher’s Nightmare Encounter with New Zealand Secondary Education,” reveals the shocking tale of Smith’s mid-life career change, wherein ultimately the author’s ensuing teaching experience at Dannevirke High School could be classified as a catastrophic failure with a capital F.
Anyone who has attempted to bring order to a classroom of unruly students, can surely relate to Smith’s plight. The author’s candid story brings to mind the docu-drama “Dangerous Minds,” wherein a female ex-Marine struggles to connect with the inner city youth she’s been hired to teach. Unfortunately in Smith’s case there is no triumphant Hollywood ending. In vivid detail Smith recounts the verbal abuse, physical assaults, sexual harassment, and mob-like intimidation he suffered at the hands of students, parents, and the Dannevirke community. The incidents took such a major toll on his health and psyche, that after eighteen months he resigned.
Smith is understandably bitter about his experience. While his lengthy treatise includes documents, letters, recollections, and actual “greenies” (the forms he had to submit for disciplinary infractions), that back up his claims, the sheer volume of information speaks to his mounting frustrations. Amidst all the bureaucracy, red tape, and inconsistencies that go along with handling problematic students, Smith’s experience takes on a kind of “Alice in Wonderland” dimension, complete with the element of Mad Hatter madness. With personal anecdotes and witty sarcasm woven into his writing, he attempts to balance and rebut a harrowing situation gone way beyond his control.
” Swimming in the Cesspool” is Smith’s effort to make public the truth about his own personal experience at Dannevirke High School. As the saying goes, “the truth will set you free.” Hopefully Smith’s truth will serve as an enlightening resource to help bring secondary education in New Zealand to a higher ground. –US Review of Books
About the Author
Former teacher, engineer, computer analyst, Pentagon gopher, Air Force officer, United Nations inmate . . . What can I say in 3900 characters that would even begin to describe me? Just read the book!
Things in my life had gone relatively well until I decided to go to New Zealand and train as a secondary school math and physics teacher. Nothing in my life could have prepared me for what greeted me in New Zealand schools: verbal abuse, sexual harassment, assault, indifferent students, violence, xenophobia, and an animosity toward education that I’d never imagined existed anywhere on earth. As one of my colleagues described it, “We’re just like Jesus Christ — we come here for no purpose but to do good and to help make their lives better and all they can think to do is to crucify us.”
I’d think it unbelievable if I hadn’t lived through every nightmarish minute of it myself. The reality was actually worse — trust me.
Noteworthy is that many immigrant kids from Canada, the U.S. and in some cases Russia & England end-up being targeted for bullying, disenfranchisement, ridiculed over their home countries, and marginalised for their efforts in school.
One family of Americans who were highly qualified Doctors returned to the U.S. after only 14 months due their sons facing the aforementioned IN A PRIVATE SCHOOL! Imagine the problems in the Public and Religious School settings…!
BUT-
IF you have a higher melanin ratio in your skin colour, no one would DARE bully you…hence a very undeniable double standard!
Maybe that’s why there has been no objections to the India / NZ Free Trade Agreement…
After all, the Uni-Party is in lock-step in dumbing down the populations whilst simultaneously promoting those from the Third World to come here and participate in both Pakeha and maori Displacement!
The MoE in it’s current form is in many cases simply a pipeline to prison, or worse if you have a child who is disabled…!
Another New Zealand Company church parliament ‘system reform’ in an attempt to fix the previous ‘system reform’ which was an attempt to fix the previously previous system reform – you get the picture. Now the church parliament is going after those pesky homeschoolers who don’t want their children to be ‘reformed’ by the state.
Remove the Teachers College. Teachers instead need to be Subject-Matter-Experts.