Bennett Paula: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
Bennett Paula: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
[Volume:647;Page:15967] 
PAULA BENNETT (National) 
: 
 Madam Chair thank you for the opportunity to stand up and speak about the financial review of the New Zealand Teachers Council for 2006-07. 
The first thing I wish to raise in terms of the review by the Finance and Expenditure Committee and the report back to the Committee is that it is incredibly unusual—certainly in my relatively short time in this Parliament and from what I have heard from my colleagues who have been here a lot longer than I have—to have in a report back to the Committee such a statement as: “Some of us are dissatisfied with the quality of the responses by the New Zealand Teachers Council and consider that they were evasive in their responses.” It was generally the consensus among the select committee members that the Teachers Council was evasive in its responses with regard to a number of issues of utmost importance which are of relevance to this Committee and which I wish to raise in this debate. 
The issue of serious misconduct must be of vital importance to all New Zealanders because at the end of the day we are talking about our teachers. There have been many instances of misconduct that have concerned the House and indeed the general public during the 2006-07 financial year. During the financial review the select committee asked when the Teachers Council is contacted about misconduct; what action it takes when it is contacted; whether the police are involved after there has been some sort of incident involving a teacher; and why the Teachers Council is not notified immediately and the teacher stood down. 
We heard from the Teachers Council that immediate notification is usually the way things go but we were certainly of the opinion—and we discussed this with the Teachers Council—that it should flag that a teacher is under investigation. That is not currently occurring when there may have been misconduct by a teacher—serious conduct in some regards—and that is of huge concern to schools across the board. We have heard in the last 12 months about teachers who have continued teaching even though they have been under investigation and some pretty hideous stuff has been going on. Fortunately this is not happening too often—not very often at all. I do not wish to be alarmist and say that misconduct is rampant out there but a few examples have come up. 
Also of concern is the process around registration. The Teachers Council says it is awaiting legislation so this is an opportunity for the Government to step up and do something relatively quickly—even though it has had 8½ years to do so. Here is the Minister of Education Chris Carter now. He will know that the council is awaiting legislation that will give it access to the Ministry of Education’s payroll database so that it can determine which teachers do not have practising certificates. The Government really needs to remove the barriers so that the database can be much more easily accessed and we can know who is registered and who is not. 
The process for overseas-trained teachers seeking New Zealand registration has been of some considerable concern to the select committee throughout the financial review process and it is something that the committee will certainly be taking a bit more time over. The committee has talked about the process and its costs. Many many instances have been mentioned. In fact I have lost count of the amount of correspondence I have received with regard to early childhood primary and secondary school teachers who have come from the UK or Australia for example and who want to teach. 
Just the other day I spoke to a woman from Whangarei. We are missing out on some good teachers because the Teachers Council is taking so long to register overseas-trained teachers and because it has not worked with the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to come up with some simple guidelines about what is and is not acceptable. The woman I spoke to the other day had moved from teaching into recruitment because it paid her something more worthwhile—and she was not even on a full teacher’s salary because she was not registered. 
It amuses me that the UK and Australia take our trained teachers in a heartbeat—particularly early childhood teachers which is my area of interest. In fact schools in the UK and Australia are actively recruiting our teachers because they are clever enough to know that our teachers are smart and have been well trained. Our teachers can move to the UK or Australia and start teaching really quickly but we in New Zealand are not in a situation where we can take any of those overseas-trained teachers and we are not looking at what we can do about it. We have not come up with a solution and that is a challenge that the Teachers Council has raised. It has said it has not been able to fix those problems. That is something for the Minister and he has indicated recently that he is looking at the registration process for international teachers.