Qualifications Framework Inquiry
Chairperson, Peter Allen is a member of the inquiry in to the Qualifications Framework. The Inquiry has been commissioned by the Post Primary Teachers Association and the findings of the Inquiry were presented to PPTA's Curriculum Conference in July 1997.

Teacher Registration Board's Policy on "The Satisfactory Teacher"
The Council has been assisting the Teacher Registration Board to develop its policy on "the Satisfactory Teacher". This policy establishes the criteria by which a teacher's performance is to be appraised prior to registration as a teacher. Amendments to the Education Act in 1996 now make it compulsory for those wishing to teach in New Zealand schools to be registered with the Teacher Registration Board.

Ministerial Green Paper on Teacher Education
The Council has been consulted in the process of producing a green paper which will set out issues for discussion about the future of pre- and in-service education for teachers. It is the Council's view that teachers should be given responsibility for setting the standards of entry into the teaching profession and for monitoring those standards of delivery of pre-service training courses which have been franchised by one provider to other providers.

A detailed submission has been made on the Green paper by the Teaching Council, this is available by emailing one of the Executive.

"Empowering Teachers" Conference April 1998
Planning for the Council's first conference is underway. The conference will be held at Auckland's Waipuna Lodge from Tuesday 21 April to Thursday 23 April 1998. Planning for the conference is the responsibility of a committee headed by Kevin O'Carroll of Sunnybrae Normal School. The conference will provide a forum for teachers from all sectors of education to share their experiences of classroom practice. Teachers will be invited to submit proposals for workshop sessions.

Getting your Conference Registration Form
To be able to register to attend this Conference you should email or Fax Kevin O'Carroll.
Email: kevin@teaching-council.co.nz
Fax: 09-443-5257

Keynote Speakers

• Professor Andy Hargreaves is the director of the International Centre for Educational Change in Toronto.
• Professor Jenny Ozga of Keele University, England.
• Dr Graham Smith the head of Maori Education at Auckland University.
• Kath Irwin, Senior Lecturer at Victoria University, Wellington.

Recent TCA Statements

"Recent announcements by the Ministry of Education of the intention to continue with short-course teacher training do nothing to allay concerns of the Teaching Council about the ability of such courses to adequately prepare new teachers," said the Chairperson of the Council, Peter Allen.

"The Council would be interested to know the depth to which the reviewers of short course training went when they undertook the review. How many trainees and trainers did they speak to and what were the terms of reference for the review?"

Independent Audit
"The Council believes that an independent audit should be undertaken of short-term courses to answer such questions as:

- how well are such courses preparing new teachers to adequately deliver the requirements of the new curriculum especially mathematics and science?
-will the short-term training qualification be acceptable in other countries such as Australia?
-what support systems will be in place in schools to assist these new teachers when they take up their positions?

"The Council points to the findings of the recently released third international mathematics and science survey in which it was clearly indicated that "a key determinant (of success) is the quality of teaching the students receive.". The survey stated that " a pre-requisite for quality instruction in a field is knowledge of the field."

The Council must ask if under the existing two and three-year training, teachers are seen as being inadequately prepared for teaching subjects such as science and mathematics, how can the Government now provide an assurance that teachers trained in short-term courses of twelve months or less, will be adequately prepared," said Mr Allen.

"The Council continues to hold the view that compressed teacher training courses are an inadequate response to the results of poor or no planning by the Ministry of Education and that the Government should declare its intention to phase them out at the earliest possible opportunity.

Raising Standards in the Teaching Profession

While speaking to the Independent Schools Conference last year, the Minister of Education, Wyatt Creech, suggested that enhancing professionalism in teaching must be a key goal in education. He said that the two factors that identified professionals in any field were competence and commitment. He said that tests had been put in place as "quality assurance mechanisms" to build confidence in the competence of teaching staff.

By 'quality assurance mechanisms' we can assume Mr Creech meant such measures as the recently introduced performance management guidelines, the attestation process recently introduced through the secondary teachers collective contract and soon-to-be introduced 'satisfactory teacher' test which will be applied when a person applies for registration or re-registration as a teacher with the Teacher Registration Board.

The former Prime Minister, Mr Bolger clearly had the issue of 'teacher professionalism' on his mind when asked what he considered to be the highlights of the 1997 budget. He selected as one of his highlights, the provision of additional moneys to 'reward the excellent teacher'' thereby promoting in his eyes, teacher professionalism.

The Education Review Office has been established for some eight years with the specific objective of auditing teacher and school effectiveness. This is seen, at least by some political leaders as a necessary extra reassurance that teachers are performing 'professionally'.

One might assume that the net effect of these measures would be a discernible improvement in the standing of the teaching profession and a growing affirmation of teachers and the quality of their work by our politicians, business leaders and media commentators. In fact, the reverse has been the case.

Teachers have been subjected to a continuing barrage of negative comment about supposed falling standards in our schools and about the supposed lack of accountability of teachers for their performance. Comments made earlier this year by the head of the Education Review Office, Judith Aitken, to the effect that there were many incompetent teachers are one example. Another is the comments of Ms Awatere-Huata, ACT New Zealand's spokesperson on education who is reported as saying that 'lousy teachers are crippling kids' chances' and that 'many teachers lacked commitment and passion to their profession.'

The irony is that the more the policy makers and the politicans fulminate about a lack of professionalism amongst teachers and endeavour to introduce ever more stringent systems of accountability, often linked with performance pay, the faster is likely to be the erosion in teacher professionalism.

Over the last eight years, the rush to make teachers seemingly more accountable, more efficient and more effective has seen the teaching profession progressively dis-empowered and shut out of taking responsibility for setting the standards in the profession.

The Teacher Registration Board was set up in 1990 to take responsibility for setting and overseeing and setting standards of entry into the teaching profession. Practising teachers have been shut out of participating in that process. Now we have the rather bizarre prospect of teachers paying for the operation of the Teacher Registration Board (through the fees they pay), being required by law to be registered to practise as a teacher and yet still not having any say in the operation of the Board.

Major curriculum and assessment developments have occurred through the introduction of the Curriculum Framework and the National Qualifications framework since 1990. While teachers have been involved in the development of both of these Frameworks at the implementation stage, teachers have been shut out of having an input into policy development. Some of the major problems which have occurred over the development of the National Qualifications Framework almost certainly would not have occurred if teachers had been directly involved in the early stages of policy development.

The message is simple and clear. If our key decision makers in New Zealand wish to encourage the development of an effective teaching profession they must allow teachers to be directly involved in education policy development. Teachers must also be allowed to take responsibility for setting and monitoring the standards of the profession. The Teacher Registration Board should be replaced by a board on which the majority of members are teachers. This would be a positive, first step towards fostering the teaching profession.

A positive, second step would be to look at replacing the Education Review Office with an audit and support agency which combined the functions of ERO with those of the Education Advisory service and which drew from practising teachers who could provide best practice advice to their colleagues.

A positive, third step would be to draw on practising teachers to assist with policy development and advice. Such a move would strengthen the likelihood that policy initiatives would actually work when implemented in schools. It would avoid the costly delays and frustrations schools have been experiencing in recent years when poorly thought-out and poorly implemented education policies have run into trouble and have had to be significantly amended or withdrawn.

The key to improving standards in the teaching profession is trust. Politicans and other key decision makers need to show that they are prepared to work with teachers and to trust that teachers will play a constructive role. Teachers, too, must be ready to show that they can play a constructive role in policy development and that they can and will take responsibility for setting and monitoring standards in the profession.

Sadly, the distinguishing feature of government-teacher relations in recent years has been a lack of trust. In the interests of the children of this country it is time to change this situation.
REVIEW OF EDUCATION EXTERNAL EVALUATION SYSTEM - ERO SUBMISSION FROM THE TEACHING COUNCIL OF AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND

ROLE OF THE EDUCATION REVIEW OFFICE

The TCA sees a need for an agency responsible to Government for reviewing and reporting on the performance of education institutions funded by the tax payer. The goal of this agency should be to conduct its audit responsibilities in such ways as to reinforce and improve the effectiveness of schools in carrying out their responsibilities.

The review agency needs to be equipped with the means to assist schools with improving their performance. It is difficult, however, for one agency to incorporate the two functions of audit and improvement. The establishment of another arm of the agency should be considered which is charged with the task of providing such assistance using the experience and data gathered by the agency. This 'arm' should actively use practising, experienced teachers on a secondment basis.

The performance of schools is influenced by factors outside the school's control which nevertheless should be recognised and taken into account when ERO makes it assessment of a school's performance. The Smithfield Project research has clearly demonstrated the influence socio-economic status has upon student performance and consequently upon school performance.

The terms of reference of the review agency should be amended to require the agency to assess the impact of external factors upon school performance and to take these into account when making recommendations. The review agency should be charged with the responsibility of reporting to Government on those factors which influence school and teacher performance and providing advice which will assist in education policy formation.

The Teaching Council is of the view that the powers of the review agency to enforce recommendations should be reinforced. This should be done in the context of a clearly defined process involving the stipulating of agreed timetables for dealing with recommendations and a warning process if recommendations are not followed up within the agreed timelines.

In the event that the findings of the review agency are disputed, an appeal process should be provided for. The creation of an appeal process where an education institution can seek and gain a review of the review agency's recommendations and requirements should be considered.

The Teaching Council believes the Education Review Office can play a valuable role in school and teacher development and improvement. The Review Office has demonstrated this capability to a degree through its publications. The Council believes that the review agency should be given the authority and resourcing to develop this aspect of its work so that it can prove an authoritative resource to teaching professionals.

At the present time ERO is not held in high regard by many teaching professionals. This is because of the generally negative tone of the review outcomes, the reluctance to recognise and celebrate good teaching practice at least in public and the bland tone of the final reports and recommendations which are written.

At the present time schools do not perceive ERO as having any great power over them to force compliance with recommendations, especially where there may be disagreement over the findings. A strengthening of the powers of ERO to force a board to comply with its recommendations should be considered. This would be strengthened by providing for an appeal process as mentioned above.

The strengthening of ERO's powers is especially important in situations where the quality of the education offering to students is being compromised by a school's acts or omissions. These powers should extend to recommending the replacement of a board with a commissioner. ERO tends to rely on the power of publicity to force compliance. This tends to have a greater impact on those schools in low socio-economic decile groups than it does with non-complying schools in high socio-economic decile areas. There is a perception amongst teachers that ERO tends to `flog` those schools in poorer areas which are perceived as not performing to expectations while overlooking or ignoring school in richer areas who may be just as guilty of failing to comply with their obligations.

Where truancy, suspension or attrition rates are high, factors other than those related to school performance usually play a part. ERO should be required to seek out and consider factors external to the school which may be contributing to such a situation. ERO should be empowered to make recommendations to the appropriate government agencies which may be able to counteract such trends, in addition to making recommendations to the school about actions it could take. Where it is a matter of the school's procedures and practices contributing to such trends ERO should be empowered to recommend courses of action (in specific terms) for the school to take and to put its assistance ÒarmÓ (referred to above) in contact with the school to assist it in tackling the situation.

Where a school or centre is found to be unsafe, ERO should be able to specify the remedial action to be taken including the agencies to be consulted and to specify the time period in which remedial action should occur with a specified follow-up review.

The life span of a Board of Trustees is three years though turnover of membership on the boards is high and many board members leave before their three year term has been completed. Training for Board members is difficult and it is often difficult to get the right mix of board members with appropriate skills to undertake the wide ranging tasks and responsibilities the Board have. A heavy load consequently falls back on the senior administration of a school to compensate. ERO should be able to specify the steps to be taken by a board to rectify inadequacies in planning including training and practical assistance through contracted consultants where necessary. This could require giving ERO the power to direct the Ministry to provide such assistance to a Board.

The review process would be best augmented by the addition of practising professionals on review teams. What annoys professionals most is that often mandatory recommendations are unrealistic and teachers are left with the impression that reviewers are unsure:

a. of how they arrived at the recommendation, and b. in what ways the school can take steps to act upon the recommendation.

The Council does not believe that it is appropriate for non-professionals to be part of the review teams. This function should be confined to teacher professionals. The Council does believe, however, that the views of parents and students should be taken into account.

Intervals of three to four years would enable schools to take remedial action within a reasonable time frame and be able to demonstrate improvements arising as a result of their actions. Reviews of a more frequent nature (at time intervals of less than years) would be disruptive of school routines and skew the planning priorities of schools,

In an earlier comment the suggestion was made that an additional ÒarmÓ of the ERO should be created to assist governing bodies implement review recommendations. An alternative to this suggestion would be to use the Education Advisory Service for this function. If this was to occur the Advisory Service would have to be greatly augmented to enable it to effectively carry out its advice and guidance function.

The Council believes that the most effective way of establishing national benchmarks of student achievement is to make use of the National Monitoring Project which has already demonstrated through the outcomes of its first survey that it is capable of surveying student achievement nationally in a reliable way, reporting the outcomes in ways which will be of great assistance to schools in reviewing and modifying their programmes. The Council believes that the work of National Monitoring Project should be enhanced and extended. This should be done in the first instance to include the Year 10 cohort in the project.

ERO has produced anumber of publications which will be considerable assistance in teacher training and development. It is the Council's view that ERO should continue to review the processes schools use in their performance management systems. ERO can assist in recommending refinements/improvements to these processes and if necessary to provide quite specific advice and guidance. The Council does believe ERO should have a role in determining teacher competency. The Council believes that this should be the professional responsibility of teachers working together to take responsibility for and to account for their performance. The Council believes that there are now more than sufficient systems in place to ensure that teacher performance is adequately monitored. If anything we believe that the systems are far too prescriptive and intrusive on teachers' responsibility to be responsible for monitoring their own professional performance where they occur.

It should be sufficient for ERO to monitor the processes a school has in place in monitoring teacher performance and to make comment and provide recommendations where such processes are seen as insufficient or inadequate.

The Teaching Council notes that an Advisory Council on Quality in Education was established in 1993. The Teaching Council is unaware as to the exact nature of the membership of this Council but believes that the majority membership of this council should be made up of practising teachers from across the education sector.

FUNCTIONS CARRIED OUT BY THE EDUCATION REVIEW OFFICE

It is the Council's view that the report provided on completion of a review should remain confidential for 12 months to allow a school to have sufficient time to improve its performance and/or allow sufficient time for an appeal of the review findings.

Public release of ERO reports should only occur at the point where a school or centre has failed to comply with review findings and has failed to adhere to an agreed timetable to put right identified inadequacies. The present practice of releasing review findings to the public results in review reports being bland to the point of being unhelpful in dealing with issues that may clearly need attention. Boards and teachers are left to try and 'read between the lines' of recommendations to try and determine exactly what the review team is saying. Media often tend to be highly selective of what they report from review reports. This can lead to a highly distorted and unfair view of a school's performance.

New Zealand schools now offer education based on the requirements of the National Curriculum Framework and associated curriculum statement within the framework of a devolved administration structure. Boards are left to interpret the requirements of the Framework and implement these. Given this, if New Zealand is to retain a coherent national system of education, there is a great need for a review agency which ensures that all schools meet minimum standards in implementing the curriculum.

This places a great responsibility on ERO and the agency should be equipped with sufficient powers where it is determined a school is not meeting minimum requirements, to ensure that this is remedied. This could include specifying the particular actions to be taken including teacher training, resource acquisition and external advice. Sanctions for non-compliance could include publication of the failure to comply, withholding a portion of the school's operating grant or replacing a board with a commissioner.

ERO's evaluation reports, based as they are, on research and practical experience of school reviewing, provide a valuable resource for school improvement. A considerable frustration for schools in today's devolved, increasingly competitive environment, is the need for every school to develop their own policies and practices. The days of collegial sharing of information, experience and resources has sadly diminished to the point where schools increasingly are left to their own devices to cope as best they can. There is a strong feeling of having to re-invent the wheel many times over. ERO could provide a considerable service to schools by expanding its role as a provider of examples of good practice. It is strongly recommended that this aspect of ERO's work be considerably enhanced.

Where children are deemed to be at risk - whether socially, educationally or with respect to safety - the paramount consideration must always be the welfare of the children. In this respect ERO should be equipped with sufficient powers to ensure that not only are they able to identify problems in a school but also specify actions to be taken to remedy those problems and put schools in touch with agencies which are able and are funded to assist them to deal with those problems. The Council believes it is irresponsible to have a system in which problems are identified and publicised but that there is no provision for support, guidance, resourcing, or, finally, ultimate sanction, should problems not be resolved.

ERO PROCESSES AND METHODOLOGY

It is the Council's view that teachers are highly trained and qualified professionals and should be treated as such. The Council looks forward to a time when evaluation of a school's performance can be carried out on collegial, co-operative basis rather than, as happens too often now, on a basis of distrust and suspicion if not, on occasions, actual obstruction. It is the Council's view that the prime responsibility for evaluating and accounting for the performance of a school are the professionals who work within it.

The Council believes that much more emphasis should be placed on developing self-review systems and practices and on relying upon teachers to exercise professional responsibility and judgement. Many schools have now developed quite sophisticated forms of self-review which are often more accurate and far more critical than the effectiveness reviews carried out by ERO.

The processes used in self-review usually comprise a mix of teacher self- and peer-evaluation, programm evaluation and class observation. As an example, the self-review system of one secondary school with which the Council is familiar, involves the review of each subject department over a three-year cycle. The review involves scrutiny of the subject department's schemes and other documents together with any national curriculum documents applying to the subject.

Each teacher teaching in the area is interviewed by a member of the review team (usually a member of the senior management team). Each teacher also completes a questionnaire. The interview and questionnaire are focused on collecting information on the ways in which the subject department is meeting the national curriculum requirements, the requirements of the school's charter and the requirements of the National Education Goals.

A sample of students across classes completes a questionnaire which seeks information about student attitudes to teaching techniques and styles together with attitudes to the subject itself. A programme of class visiting is undertaken in which every class is visited. The reviewers concentrate in their class visits on checking for evidence that school and department policies are being followed, for example, assessment policies.

The review is completed by discussing with the head of the subject department the outcomes of the review and the recommendations arising from the review. This is followed by a meeting with all of the teachers in the department. The recommendations also incorporate, where necessary, an agreed timetable for meeting the recommendations.

Variations of this system involving individual and peer-teacher assessment and programme evaluation, can be found in most schools throughout the country.

Self-review systems have the capacity, in the Council's view, to be more effective in bringing about change and improvement because the teachers themselves are in control of the process and 'own' the outcomes far more directly than they do the outcomes of the ERO views. The self-review process enables teachers to celebrate their successes both individually and collegially whilst being quite 'hard-nosed' about their assessment of the effectiveness of their progammes. They usually pull no punches. There is often a tendecny for teachers who wish to, to dismiss the results of ERO reviews as the results of uninformed outside observation. Self review systems minimise the likelihood that teachers will dismiss the results even if some might want to.

Such review systems place squarely on teachers, professional responsibility for monitoring their own performance. Such systems are extremely resource intensive and require considerable and ongoing teacher training. ERO could play a very significant role in monitoring the operation of self-review systems and providing advice as to how such systems could be introduced into schools, based on their observations of best practice. ERO, after all, is the only organisation regularly in schools observing teaching practice and education administration in action, throughout New Zealand.

In terms of the data collected by ERO to assist in school reviews, great care needs to be exercised to ensure that the material gathered provides the fairest, most balanced view of the school and its community as possible. Reference has earlier been made to the Smithfield Research Project. It is clear from the results of this project that the use of external examination results as a way of measuring the effectiveness of schools will provide unbalanced, unfair, distorted view of the difference one school can make for its students compared with the efforts of other schools.

Ways need to be explored of using the data provided by the National Monitoring Project as a way of assisting schools to determine fairly the effectiveness of their programmes in helping students to achieve the achievement objectives, skills, values set out in the national curriculum statements.

The information used to provide information on educational achievement should be that which is generated as part of the normal activities of the school in delivering the national curriculum. Teachers need to be trained (pre-entry) to identify the achievement objectives they are teaching to, and the ways in which data is collected to determine the degree to which those objectives are met. Teachers need to receive on-going and refresher training in these techniques. The provision of data to illustrate the degree and manner in which a school is helping its students to reach the achievement objectives should not be special one-off events especially staged for the benefit of an ERO Review. If this is the case then such reviews have not achieved their purpose. Worse, they may in fact contribute to a decline in educational standards.

To date, there has been considerable scepticism amongst teachers about the validity of the reviews carried out by ERO and the recommendations made as a result. This is because there is strong scepticism about the quality and validity of the data collected by ERO as a basis for drawing conclusions. This is fuelled when teachers are confronted by reviewers who have little or no expertise in the areas in which they are teaching.

ERO has a role in determining the extent to which schools are meeting the requirements of the national curriculum but those who are required to make those judgements must have sufficient training and must be sufficiently qualified and have sufficient experience to make informed and trusted judgements.

In the end no form of data will be sufficient to provide an accurate, reliable view of how well a school is 'doing'. This is most likely to be provided through a large range of data gathering processes, some of which can be applied by external reviewers, others can only be applied by those working within the schools and operating self-review processes. This means that a partnership between ERO and teachers must be developed if robust, reliable and trusted forms of review are to be developed and applied for the good of New Zealand school students.

The Teaching Council is grateful for the opportunity to contribute its views to this evaluation of the Education Review Office.

It would appreciate the opportunity to speak to the Review panel about its views.

For further comment or information about this submission please contact

The Chairperson Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand 282 King Street Rangiora

Phone 03 313 4971 (home) or 03 313 7005 (work)