For two decades, New Zealand’s school education system has been in a death spiral.  

In 2007, the Ministry of Education adopted a curriculum bereft of knowledge. A few years earlier it had implemented NCEA, an unorthodox ‘standards-based’ approach to school qualifications. NCEA encourages fragmented teaching and rewards superficial learning. 

Around the same time, Teachers Colleges were absorbed by the universities. The universities’ initial teacher education (ITE) programmes do not prepare new teachers well for the profession. Trainees have too little classroom experience during their training. The quality of the professional mentoring they receive is highly variable. The coursework focusses on the wrong things. 

Data, both domestic and international, demonstrate the dismal consequences. Our young people are less literate and numerate, and generally less knowledgeable, than they were 20 years ago. 

Education Minister Erica Stanford is on a mission to turn things around. A new, knowledge-rich curriculum is on the way. Work is being undertaken to reform NCEA. 

Improving ITE will be more difficult. The Minister cannot simply decree reform. Two key institutions are beyond her direct control. 

Universities have academic freedom. Politicians cannot dictate the content of their courses – and that includes ITE programmes. If universities want to include ineffective literacy instruction methods in their ITE, they can do so. The Minister cannot stop them. 

That brings us to The Teaching Council. To register as a teacher, ITE graduates must meet the Council’s Standards for the Teaching Profession.  

Ideally, the Standards would incentivise universities to improve their ITE programmes. If they required teachers to demonstrate effective classroom instruction, for example, universities would have to ensure their graduates could do so. 

Unfortunately, the teaching standards provide no such incentive. They are vague and are not rigorously assessed. And again, there is little the Minister can do about it. Most of the Teaching Council membership is elected by the teaching profession. 

An amendment to the Education and Training Act, currently before select committee, will begin to move things in the right direction. The amendment will require the Teaching Council to consult the Minister before changing teaching standards. This is only a minor change, but it puts the Council on notice. 

The Minister is right to tread carefully. Overtly politicising teachers’ professional standards would be a mistake. She has taken the curriculum by storm, but with teacher education, a softly-softly approach is more likely to yield durable results.