Colleague Denise Torrey is the new and very well respected president of the New Zealand Principals Federation. In her weekly editorial to members this week, she highlights the very disconcerting Education Amendment Bill passed last week in parliament; describing the bill as making "for a black week in Education". She went on to write:
"Initially, NZPF welcomed the promise of a shift towards independence and ownership of the Teachers’ Council by the profession and applauded its focus on raising the status of the profession. These were ideas the Minister publicised when talking about the changes early on. As it turned out, the amendments are anything but confidence boosting and certainly won’t raise any optimism for the profession.
In our own submission on the Bill, we addressed a number of issues including the name ‘EDUCANZ’. Our alternative suggestion was TCANZ – Teachers’ Council of Aotearoa NZ. In our view teachers are unlikely to feel ownership of a professional body intended for and funded by them which doesn’t have the word ‘teacher’ in it.
We also drew attention to the language used in the bill pointing out the way in which the word ‘educator’ and ‘teacher’ were used to mean the same thing when they are patently not.
Finally we drew attention to the process for appointing the members of the governing board which involved the Minister choosing them all. This is hardly a process to make teachers feel they have autonomy in relation to their own professional body.
We also opposed the changes to accommodate charter schools because ‘charter school [workers] will work in exactly the same contexts as trained teachers, but will have no legislated requirement to be registered, and the list of critical functions from which they are exempt must be seen first as a concern, and then as a contradiction of the stated goals of the new body’.
There were in excess of 1000 submissions. Most, like NZPF, opposed aspects of the Bill. We placed our trust in the select committee process and believed that if enough people opposed certain bits of the Bill, they would be changed. But not so. The Select Committee vote was an even split, so status quo rules and all of the objectionable parts of the Bill remain.
Cynics had myriad Tui billboards in mind long ago. Given last week’s outcome, perhaps we all should have. Rather than empowering the profession, this legislation has done the opposite. It is about controlling us. That’s what is so disappointing.
NZPF believed that there were areas for improvement and looked forward to seeing the Teachers’ Council strengthened, as was already happening. We envisaged ERO as the natural auditor for appraisal and looked forward to better pre-service selection, co-ordinated, suitably funded, quality PLD and professional development programmes for principals.
Your national executive will meet this weekend and consider how we might respond to this new legislation. We have had discussions with both NZEI and PPTA and will continue with those discussions. We will keep you updated on any progress."
Denise is right. It is about disempowering and controlling the teaching profession. The only step left to take is to totally silence the profession; "Und zey haff vays of doing zat too, mein liddle Liebchen..."
