Teacher registration to reflect new training

Teacher registration is to be broadened to embrace plans to include trades and training in the school system.

The Teachers' Council plans to create a new teacher registration policy to meet Government policies to keep more pupils in a wider range of school-based training schemes.

Schools were becoming increasingly complex, with a wider range of teaching staff, and new policies raised questions about what defined a teacher, Teachers' Council director Peter Lind said.

"How you deliver those and who is able to be recognised as trained and qualified to teach? What sorts of categories of registration might we need in the future?

"If you are a guidance counsellor in a school, obviously you're doing a different kind of job than what traditionally a teacher would do, and quite a number of teachers end up moving into that kind of role."

The council was consulting the sector on teacher registration changes ahead of the release of a draft consultation policy this year.

The Government is fast-tracking the introduction of its Youth Guarantee a policy to provide funding for anyone under 18 not in school or a job to undertake courses that contribute towards school-level qualifications.

This week, Education Minister Anne Tolley announced some details of planned trades academies to be attached to schools.

The academies would provide for students who wanted to opt for practical hands-on education experiences and would address local skills shortages, Tolley said.

The first centre, already established at South Auckland's Southern Cross Campus, provides school students with trades training in fabrication, armed services, tourism, business, creative design, and hospitality.

Tolley yesterday told The Press the Government would set up at least five trades academies before 2011, and officials were working on how to fast-track the Youth Guarantee. Ministers would make decisions on the policy in the coming months.

"The decision to speed up the Youth Guarantee is reflective of the Government's commitment to providing education and training opportunities to younger New Zealanders who may find it difficult to find employment in these tough economic times," Tolley said.

New Zealand Council for Educational Research senior researcher Karen Vaughan said a lot was asked of schools, but they did have to change.

"There is some room for schools and industry to be closer together."

Vaughan, who today addresses the Vocational Education and Training Research Forum in Wellington, is researching youth transition for a five-year education-employment linkages project funded by the Government.

"We've had an explosion of new opportunities for young people leaving school and a whole lot more responsibility on young people to make good choices, but we haven't necessarily provided very obvious pathways for them," Vaughan said.

"We've tended to emphasise some pathways at the expense of others, and it leaves some young people really lost."

- © Fairfax NZ News