Drive for tougher teacher regulation

Teachers will have a tougher system of practising certificates in a proposed overhaul of registration rules.

The Teachers Council has released a consultation paper on proposed registration changes.

The teachers' professional body is also reviewing initial teacher education providers, seeking to drop those believed to be doing a poor job.

"The whole rationale behind all of this work is around who gets entry into the profession and under what conditions they get entry into the profession," council director Peter Lind said. "Basically, we haven't had a single overarching registration policy in the last number of years ... It's trying to draw all of these pieces together to make a sensible, coherent document for everybody to try and understand."

The council's proposals state that current laws do not make a distinction between registration as membership of a profession and the ability to "practise" competently.

Some registration authorities, such as the Nursing Council and the Institution of Professional Engineers, made such a distinction.

The council proposed that registration would have to be supplemented by a current practising certificate to be able to teach.

Three categories of practising certificate would be issued, based on teaching experience.

The council also suggested changing the definition of "recent experience" to mean one year of teaching in the past three years, rather than two in the past five years.

Earlier, Lind told The Press that teacher-training providers would be encouraged to recruit fewer and higher-quality trainees, particularly in the primary schools sector.

In its newsletter to members, School Trustees Association president Lorraine Kerr asked if the current training system produced the right number of consistently well-prepared, high-quality graduates.

"[Are] our systems for identifying and dealing with those who have made it into the system in spite of the checks and balances, or have stayed too long, or have simply lost their `teaching mojo' effective? ... The answer, of course, is no."

Lind said consultation on the proposed registration changes would close on November 27.

Some changes would be in place next year, while others would need law changes.

- © Fairfax NZ News