Removal of elected members from Teaching Council shows disdain for profession

The Minister is introducing into Parliament today a further last-minute amendment to the Education and Training Amendment (System Reform) Bill, which is due to be debated today. This amendment would strip the Teaching Council – the body that is meant to represent the teaching profession – of all elected members.

Chris Abercrombie said the changes being steamrolled through today confirm what teachers said when the Bill was first introduced: the Minister does not want the teaching profession to have any role in setting or overseeing its own professional standards.

“Originally the Minister intended to assert influence on the Council by reducing the number of elected members on the governing board, but she has now decided to take total control and deny teachers any voice on the body that regulates our profession. 

“This isn’t the action of a Minister who values teachers and their amazing work, but a Minister who has disdain for teachers and is only listening to a very small hand-picked group of people with particular views about education.”

“These changes introduced today were not signalled even though Ministry of Education documents show they had been secretly worked upon since at least March. They should have been able to be presented to the select committee that was considering the Bill. It is just like the Government’s gutting of pay equity last year – there was no consultation and they steamrolled it through.

“The legitimate process now would be to refer the Bill back to select committee, so that it can call for further submissions on this new set of changes. That is the right and decent thing to do.”