Hipkins ChrisEDUCATION (TEACHING COUNCIL OF AOTEAROA) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I move That the Education (Teaching Council of Aotearoa) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill.This is a very good day for the teaching profession in New Zealand. This Government has a clear vision for teaching and the profession in New Zealand. It is a vision of a profession that is high-quality that is highly trusted and that is highly respected—one that enables our children and young people to thrive and that supports them in doing so. To achieve this vision we know that the teachers and the Government need to work together in partnership. We know that teaching is a collaborative process and therefore we need to recognise that in the way the profession is regulated.This bill is yet another step in our quest to build on that partnership. The council's purpose as defined by law is to ensure safe and high-quality leadership teaching and learning for children and young people in early childhood education in primary schools in intermediate schools and in secondary schools. The council has a role to raise the status of the teaching profession and ensure that quality teaching is a guarantee for young New Zealanders.In my view the name of the council should reflect that very purpose. This was something that the profession itself expressed very strongly when the former National Government established the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand. Overwhelmingly the profession that is regulated by the council wanted to see the name teaching" reflected in the name of the organisation and this bill delivers on that. We have listened to the profession. We know that they want to be recognised as the teaching profession and therefore we will be ensuring that the name of the Education Council is changed to the Teaching Council to reflect that.To some extent the Education Council was somewhat misleading because the Education Council does not regulate all of the educators. It does not regulate many many parts of the education workforce. It does regulate the teaching profession. That is its job and that is the title that should be used so we will change that name. The council has a role to raise the status of the profession and as I mentioned we need to work in partnership with teachers but teachers also need to play their part in that vision being realised by being positive ambassadors for their profession and supporting the vision of teaching as a positive rewarding and valued career choice. It is much more difficult to get teachers to buy into that when they don't have any say or democratic control over that organisation. It is one of the few professions that we do that to and we're going to change that with this bill.When the Education Council was created the then National Government made the decision that the Minister would appoint all nine members to the governing body of the council. We don't do that for nurses lawyers doctors or many other professions and in fact I can recall a debate in this Parliament when the then Labour Government was regulating real estate agents and the then National Opposition went to great lengths to ensure that real estate agents had the ability to elect their own representatives. I think it says everything about that former Government's priorities that they were willing to die in a ditch to ensure real estate agents get to elect their representatives but not teachers. This bill changes that and for the better.This bill changes the composition of the Education Council from its existing nine members to a total of 13 members. Seven of those will be elected. The majority of them will be elected by the professions. We have designated positions for primary and secondary and early childhood educators a position each for the teachers and a position each for the leadership of those professions—so principals or leaders in early childhood education—and we have a position set aside for teacher educators because again they are an integral part of the partnership that goes into building a high-quality highly trusted and highly respected profession. The balance of the membership—the six remaining members—will be appointed by the Minister. That is important because we want to ensure that we get a diversity of representation and a diversity of views on the council. By allowing the Minister to appoint the balance of the members we allow for any representational deficits that might come out of the election to be remedied and we do give the Government some ability to still have an interest in what is the partnership. But we are recognising in the make-up of the council—seven elected representatives; six from Government—that the balance should tip in favour of the profession in favour of the democratic representation of the members who are being regulated by this bill.It's important to remember that this organisation has the ability to levy members—effectively to tax teachers. At the moment the Education Council as it is now known is going through a consultation process on what their fees should be and they are proposing a significant increase in the registration fees for the teaching profession. What remedy do teachers have if they disagree with that? At the moment they have none because they have no say over who governs them. Under this bill if they are dissatisfied with the decisions made by their representatives they will be able to replace through a democratic election more than half of the council. So in many ways this is about allowing the council to have the respect and mana within the profession it regulates to do the job that it is there to do effectively. How can the body build the status of the profession if it does not have the support of that profession? And we know that that is currently the case.The council has done some very good work and I want to pay tribute to the current members of the council and to Graham Stoop who is the current leader of the organisational side of the council. They have gone to great lengths to build the trust and confidence of the profession and they have done some good first steps. For example the work that they have done around changing the registered teacher criteria is I think a positive development. I think the work that they are doing now around looking at the quality and value of initial teacher education and how we can ensure teachers are better prepared for the classroom when they finish their initial teacher training—those are things that the council should take a leadership role in they are taking a leadership role in and their ability to do so will be strengthened if the profession itself feels a greater sense of ownership over the work of that council.An election is not too much to ask for the teaching profession. It is not going to be the be all and end all of this work. This is a first step—it's actually not even a first step; we've already taken steps prior to this but it is another step on what will be a long journey towards building the status of the teaching profession.I want to make just a word of caution to members on the other side who in previous debates on this matter have accused members on this side of the House of being union lackeys among other things and talking about our union mates as Nikki Kaye has done in the past. I want to remind the aspiring Leader of the Opposition who already seems to have assumed the position that to them they may be our "union mates"; to us they are teachers and no Government can achieve what it is setting out to achieve in the education system without having teachers on side.Teachers are the people who work with young people who work with children every day to help them realise their dreams and aspirations. We stand side by side with teachers we back the profession and we're willing to trust and respect this profession in a way that the previous Government were never willing to do."