Jones Dail: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
Jones Dail: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Volume:645;Page:14527] 
11.  
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
 to the  
Minister of Education 
: What action if any is he taking to improve resources and on-the-job training for trainee teachers following the release of a Ministry of Education review that found a “significant minority” of teachers gaining full registration fell short of the required standard? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER (Minister of Education) 
: 
 There is no Ministry of Education review that made that claim but the Labour-led Government is always seeking ways to improve the quality of New Zealand teachers. In September 2007 the Government released a discussion document on initial teacher education entitled  
Becoming a Teacher in the 21st Century 
. One hundred and four submissions were received and I am expecting advice soon from the Ministry of Education about those submissions. I need to remind the House that the vast majority of New Zealand teachers are among the best in the world—as demonstrated by the high achievement of New Zealand students in the recent international OECD rankings where our students ranked highest in the English-speaking world in mathematics science and literacy. 
Gordon Copeland 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. The Minister’s response puzzles me somewhat. All of us know that we have to produce evidence to the Clerk’s Office for primary questions. The member’s primary question mentioned a review by the Ministry of Education but the Minister said there was no such review. That seems to me to be out of order. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: The member is required to produce authentication which undoubtedly the member did and that authentication would have been a front-page story in the  
New Zealand Herald 
. But that story is incorrect as the Minister pointed out. It is not actually a review in the same way that when that paper described I think it was 42.9 percent of Maori voters as wanting to go with the National Party it was describing four people out of seven in its poll. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I think that addresses the question. 
Dail Jones 
: Is the Minister concerned that the report  
Becoming a Teacher in the 21st Century— 
which was presented by the previous Minister of Education Steve Maharey and presumably is a report from the previous Minister—is considerably alarming and that as many as several thousand graduate teachers have entered the teaching workforce since 2000 after receiving this Government’s “variable quality” teacher education; and would he agree that if a “significant minority” of those new teachers have competency issues then parents should rightly have concerns about the quality of the education their children are receiving? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: We have received 104 submissions on the report that the member quoted from. We are assessing those submissions at the moment. The  
New Zealand Herald  
seemed to cut and paste from the submissions which were on the website of the Ministry of Education and then purported that to be an exclusive which is rather an astonishing story. 
Hon Marian Hobbs 
: What steps has the Labour-led Government taken to improve the quality of beginning teachers? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: It has taken a number of very important initiatives. In addition to reviewing the initial teacher education our Government has been very active in supporting beginning teachers. The steps that we have taken include a beginning teacher time allowance to release new teachers for professional development; the introduction of the specialist classroom teacher position responsible for the induction of new teachers; and the establishment of the New Zealand Teachers Council with a wide mandate to improve teacher standards. Just recently for example the council issued new graduating teacher standards for trainee teachers which are designed to lift professional standards. We have increased the allowances paid to tutor teachers which encourages people to become mentors for beginning teachers. 
Te Ururoa Flavell 
: Tena koe Madam Speaker. Kia ora tatou. What action will the Minister be taking towards the recommendation from the Education and Science Committee that “Teachers should be awarded full registration after two years’ employment only if they have demonstrated that they are able to raise consistently the achievement of their students.”? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: I am looking very carefully at the inquiry that the select committee has done into making the school system work for every child. I want to assure the member though that we have in place already very good criteria for teachers to have their professional competencies checked. Every teacher in New Zealand every year undergoes a competency test. There are three levels: beginning teachers fully registered teachers and experienced teachers of over 5 years’ service. So there are lots of checks and balances in place to make sure that we get the very best quality of teaching and learning in our schools. As I said in my primary answer that is evidenced already by the very high scores that New Zealand students achieve in international comparisons. 
Dail Jones 
: Would the Minister consider introducing an even better scheme—namely a student loan abatement scheme—to encourage qualified New Zealand graduates to enter and remain in the teaching profession here in New Zealand and not go overseas as a means of reducing these problems; if not why not? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: That is a very interesting idea and I myself was a graduate who was bonded under that type of system. We are looking at a variety of ways to encourage New Zealand graduates to stay in New Zealand. One very encouraging thing of course is that they do not pay interest on their student loans if they stay in New Zealand. 
Te Ururoa Flavell 
: Is the Minister aware of the comments of Professor Mason Durie in describing the disparity between the achievement of Maori and non-Maori as a “long-term education debt” and what investment will the Minister be making into teacher training in order to rectify that debt and prevent it from translating into the wasted resource of continued poor outcomes in Maori education? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: Considerable investment has already taken place to try to lift the achievement of all New Zealand students—not least of all the extra $4 billion that the Government has invested in education in the 8 years that Labour has been in Government; and not least of all the 5000 extra teachers we have put into New Zealand schools the 55000 new classrooms the 36 new schools; and so it goes on. There has been a lift in the achievement of Maori and Pasifika students but the member is quite right: there is still a way to go to get all of our students particularly those from the Maori and Pacific communities to achieve their full potential. Schools Plus aims to do that.