Dyson RuthEDUCATION (TEACHERS' CODE OF ETHICS) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingHon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I move That the Education (Teachers' Code of Ethics) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Science Committee to consider the bill. I do not want to gloat about it but this is the second of my three members' bills that are before Parliament at this very moment and it is actually not about luck; it is entirely skill-based of course. Tim Macindoe: Manipulation of the biscuit tin. Hon RUTH DYSON: Yes it is. It is based on the merit of the member's bill that is in the ballot. It is interesting though tonight the range of members' bills that we have seen and I think the standard of debate has greatly improved this evening compared with some other evenings. So I commend the Government members to continue along that path. The point of this bill is to replace the code of conduct that is in section 387 of the Education Act and replace it with a new code of ethics—that is to restore the primacy of a code of ethics for the teaching profession which is something that I think everyone in this House would understand and feel very strongly about. This bill has been in the ballot for some time. It was drawn on a Thursday and the very next day—literally the day after—the Education Council released the draft of the code that it is required to prepare called Our Code Our Standards. I cannot claim credit and say that having the member's bill drawn on Thursday drove the Education Council to produce its draft code on the Friday but the timing—the coincidence—was extraordinary. The Education Council code has been very well received and I want to commend the council not just for the framing of the code but also for the way that it is engaging and the people who need to be the most highly regarded in that are of course our teachers. This bill runs parallel to that code but more importantly it also futureproofs it and I will come back to that point later. There has been quite a lot of debate about the way we engage with teachers the regard we have and I suppose the confidence we have in them to be a self-regulating profession. In my view we should view teachers from a high-status high-trust basis and that has not always been the case in the last few years. In fact the lack of that respect for teachers really was part of the driver for the creation of this bill. Teachers have made it very clear that they do not want a punitive code of conduct. They have the same values-based thinking as our medical practitioners in terms of errors being part of a constant improvement movement rather than punitive but they also made it very clear that they wanted an aspirational code of ethics. The draft code that the Education Council has released has satisfied the legislative mandate that it has been given without it being punitive and I think that is something that has been very carefully considered by it. That is not something that it could just rush into; it needed to balance that up very carefully. At the moment the Minister of Education appoints 100 percent of the members of the Education Council so while praising the current council for the work that it has done there is sadly no guarantee that a future Minister—in fact we are going to have a new Minister within a matter of weeks—might not make appointments to the Education Council that have a completely different frame of thinking and who actually might say that the punitive approach is the way to keep teachers on their mettle and to sharpen their act. You know we have heard that sort of language before and it is not the language I support. So this is really looking to the future and saying that it is bad that this bill was not drawn months ago but it is actually good that we can now look at the framing of this bill alongside the draft code that the Education Council has put out and ask how we make sure that the huge support that that draft code has engendered is the basis of future documents. So that is really the basis of this. That is why this bill despite the draft code being put out is still relevant. I suppose all of us have had instances—particularly those who are electorate MPs—where a school or teachers have got into difficulty and often members of the public have very strong views about what should happen there. Of course we must hold teachers accountable. Of course we have to value their educational judgment. But as I said before the high-status high-trust model is one that has worked for many years for us and has given us a teaching profession that is internationally well regarded. I hope that the majority of members in this House—as they did with Steffan Browning's bill just prior to this—are able to support this bill to go to a committee. I would love this bill to be considered alongside the debate that is taking place on the draft education code Our Code Our Standards so that we can look at what teachers particularly have said what the education sector as a whole has said and what the Education Council says needs improving—if anything—in the legislative framework so that we can all be confident as a Parliament that we are giving our education sector the best possible frame to work in. That is the way to drive high-quality education that is the way to drive confidence in our education profession and that is the way to get the best-possible outcomes for our students throughout the country. I have just about completed drafting another bill and because it is nearly the end of April we have not got long to go before the election. I would like to increase my chances of getting another bill drawn by now sitting down and making sure that we have a number of bills drawn from the ballot in the near future.