Hipkins ChrisEDUCATION (TEACHING COUNCIL OF AOTEAROA) AMENDMENT BILLSecond ReadingHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I move That the Education (Teaching Council of Aotearoa) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. This bill amends the Education Act of 1989 by changing the name of the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand to the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand to better reflect the purpose of the council but far more importantly changes the composition of the council so that seven members are elected by the teaching profession themselves with the remaining six members appointed by the Minister of Education.This is about restoring democratic representation to the governing body of teachers. It is about lifting the status of the teaching profession which is the stated aim of the body whose composition we are changing. This is just one part of a wider work programme this Government has in place to lift the status of the teaching profession to address the concerns that teachers have been raising and to ensure that they are the trusted respected and valued profession that they deserve to be. I could talk through many other things we're doing around National Standards learning support teacher supply and so on but I'm not going to do that because there won't be time in a 10-minute speech and I do want to focus on this particular bill.I'd like to thank the chair and the members of the Education and Workforce Committee for their careful consideration of the bill and I do want to thank the people and organisations who made submissions on this bill and took the opportunity to have their voices heard on this important issue for the teaching profession. I understand that the teaching profession submitted overwhelmingly in favour of the provisions of this bill.I am disappointed—I am disappointed—to read however the minority view on the bill. I note that the Opposition members think that having elected teachers on the teaching body that regulates their profession could—and this is a direct quote—have a detrimental impact on the organisation's ability to fulfil its core functions." They then go on to argue that it could impose unnecessary cost to the taxpayers of New Zealand. I'm not sure that they've actually been paying attention over the last four or five years because up until the Teachers Council was turned into the Education Council it was 100 percent funded by the teaching profession. At the moment it gets a taxpayer subsidy because under the previous Government they botched the process up so badly they had to put more money in to bail out the council.The Government's intention here is to ensure that the Teaching Council belongs to teachers. That is fundamentally what this bill is all about. So ultimately teachers are the ones who pay for the Teaching Council and they support the bill. They have overwhelmingly submitted in favour of this bill. They have asked for that and I'm very very proud to be the Minister of Education that's listening to that concern. But actually the Opposition go on further in their minority view: "The proposed shift to an election-based membership approach will undermine the sustainability" of the leadership that the council provides. They think that elections undermine leadership—well I think that says everything about where the National Party are.It is of utmost importance that professional organisations such as the Education Council are seen to be independent from both industry advocacy organisations and Government. So ultimately who are they accountable to? If they're not accountable to the Government and they're not accountable to the industry that they regulate and represent should they just be there to be accountable only to themselves? I don't believe that to be the case. I think that the Education Council—the Teaching Council as it will now be known—should be accountable to teachers and I think the appropriate way to achieve that is to have teachers elect the majority of representatives to that council.The committee has recommended a number of technical changes to the bill in response to submissions that they have heard. They have first added the name "New Zealand" to the proposed title of the "Teaching Council of Aotearoa" and I think this is a good idea. They've also made a number of technical changes to the composition of the council. The first is the removal of the requirement that the teacher educator who'll be elected by teacher educators holds a current practising certificate. This is a very reasonable change. They'll still have to be a registered teacher they will still have to have five or more years of experience in initial or ongoing teacher education and they'll have to be working in one of the two teaching fields but they won't have to have a current practising certificate. That's important because those working in initial teacher education often won't satisfy the requirements to get a current practising certificate but they can still be registered teachers. So by requiring them to be registered teachers we're ensuring that they understand the job in and out and back to front but that they can also contribute the perspectives of initial teacher educators.The second change to the composition of the council has been to recommend the adoption of the term "early childhood education service leader" for the head of an early childhood education service representative position. I think that that's a very useful change because it ensures that someone who would otherwise be eligible for election to that position isn't excluded because the centre that they work in and that they lead adopts a different job title to the one that was previously proposed in the bill. So I think that that's also a very reasonable change.The committee has also recommended that the early childhood education member be elected by early childhood education service leaders who are registered teachers—or that the service leader representative be elected by service leaders who are registered teachers and hold a current practising certificate. We do have some in the system. There is potential there. Basically the committee wants to ensure that it's registered teachers who are electing their representatives to this body because that's the job of the body—it's to regulate the teaching profession. They proposed a term of office of three years and a maximum of three terms and the committee has recommended aligning the term of election with the term of appointment of the ministerial appointee. So where there is a change there will be one single change every three years. I think that also does make some sense. I know that they considered a sequenced approach but have chosen instead to have a single transition point and I understand their reasons for doing that.They've also put forward several recommendations around the transition from the Education Council to the Teaching Council which I think are sensible. One of those transition measures is that they're ensuring that those who are successfully elected take office three months after they are successfully elected to allow the Minister of the day the opportunity to then appoint the balance of the council to ensure that the council does have the right mix of skills and experience and ability. So the teachers will still be electing the majority but there is often a need there to ensure that the right mix of representation is achieved—the right gender balance the right ethnic balance the right skills balance. The Minister of the day will be able to do that by having that three months between the election and the new members taking office in which they'll be able to do that.I'm very proud of this bill. This bill fulfils a commitment that this Government made to the teaching profession to give them back their professional voice to send them a clear message that we trust teachers to regulate their own profession as we do with lawyers as we do with accountants as we do with real estate agents. The question that everybody I think in the profession will want to know is: why is it that the members opposite having taken this right away from the teaching profession who now claim that they value teachers so highly—why are they continuing to oppose it?"