Submission to New Zealand Teachers Council Review Committee

Submission to New Zealand Teachers Council Review Committee

Teach First NZ is an independent charitable trust, established in 2011 to support the
advancement of education in New Zealand. We aim to contribute to tackling educational
inequality by encouraging top graduates to teach in schools serving lower decile
communities and by ultimately supporting these individuals, as Teach First NZ alumni, to
remain committed to advancing educational opportunity throughout their lives. Later this year
we plan to launch a two-year initial teacher education programme in partnership with The
University of Auckland, aimed at attracting top university graduates – who otherwise may not
have considered the profession – to teach in secondary schools serving lower decile
communities. Through this new field-based programme, one of our main objectives is to
position teaching as a high-status choice for New Zealand’s top graduates.

We have decided to make a submission to this Review Committee because of our
commitment to high-quality initial teacher education, and because of our recent experience
in working with the New Zealand Teachers Council. Our submission, therefore, responds
specifically to the following area of the review’s terms of reference:

            The capability and capacity of the New Zealand Teachers Council to
            lead the teaching profession with respect to…quality
            assurance/approval of teacher education programmes and graduate
            outcomes, including the effectiveness of its relationship with the
            Universities and other providers of initial teacher education

We focus our submission around Fenton Whelan’s research about ‘getting the right people
to become teachers’. In particular, we have chosen to address Whelan’s point about the
importance of using new pathways into teaching as a way to attract a greater proportion of
high-quality applicants to initial teacher education. A key assumption adopted in this
submission is that initial teacher education is one of the major drivers of teacher quality, and
thus impacts significantly on student outcomes in schools.

 The performance of a school system rests on the quality of its teachers. School systems
 which have made teaching an attractive career choice and are selective about who
 becomes a teacher tend to be among the top performing school systems in the world.
 The best school systems have five or six applicants for every place in teacher training
 and rigorously select those with the right attributes to become effective teachers. Many
 policymakers attribute the attractiveness of a career in teaching to variables seemingly
 outside their control: among them culture, the status of the teaching profession, and the
 government’s willingness to pay even higher teacher salaries. In fact, getting the right
 people to become teachers depends more on a simple set of policy choices: 1)
 rigorously selecting applicants before they enter teacher training, 2) opening up different
 routes into teaching, 3) paying good compensation, and 4) actively promoting teaching
 careers.

  Lessons Learned: How Good Policies Produce Better Schools (Whelan, 2009: 52)

Teach First NZ: Submission to NZ Teachers Council Review Committee               August 2012

Our recent experience in working with the New Zealand Teachers Council through its initial
teacher education programme approval process has demonstrated opportunities for
improvement and further innovation. In particular, we recommend its capability to support the
development of alternative pathways into teaching be strengthened, so that the benefits of
such pathways can be fully realised.

                            Summary of recommendations

 Recommendation 1: Alternative pathways into teaching should be encouraged
 because of their potential to:

        appeal to wider groups of prospective high-quality teachers, including more
         men, more Māori and Pasifika people, and more shortage subject
         specialists;
        increase the status of the teaching profession;
        improve student outcomes in schools;
        strengthen links between initial teacher education providers and schools;
         and
        encourage innovation in initial teacher education more broadly.

 Recommendation 2: Entry to initial teacher education programmes should be
 made more competitive by applying more rigorous entry standards to all
 programmes, and by implementing a national strategy to ensure the number of
 graduates is responsive to the needs of the teacher workforce.

 Recommendation 3: Initial teacher education programme requirements and
 approval guidelines should be reviewed to support multiple pathways into
 teaching, including employment-based pathways.

 Recommendation 4: The Limited Authority to Teach (LAT) provision should be
 reviewed to support multiple pathways into teaching, including employment-based
 pathways. Further, all LAT holders should be encouraged to actively work towards
 attaining teacher registration.

                                              2

Teach First NZ: Submission to NZ Teachers Council Review Committee                August 2012

 Recommendation 1: Alternative pathways into teaching should be encouraged
 because of their potential to:

        appeal to wider groups of prospective high-quality teachers, including more
         men, more Māori and Pasifika people, and more shortage subject
         specialists;
        increase the status of the teaching profession;
        improve student outcomes in schools;
        strengthen links between initial teacher education providers and schools;
         and
        encourage innovation in initial teacher education more broadly.

Currently in New Zealand, the vast majority of people who want to become teachers must
undertake their initial teacher education either through a university-based three-year
undergraduate programme or a university-based one-year graduate programme. While
these models have proven to be effective, they by their nature place limits on the pool of
people who are attracted to become teachers.

While not compromising the integrity of such established initial teacher education
programmes, there is a strong body of research indicating that more flexible structures in
initial teacher education are effective in appealing to wider groups of prospective teachers
(OECD, 2011). Just as multiple learning pathways are offered in schools to achieve
equitable educational outcomes for an increasingly diverse school student population, so
too, and for the same reasons, we believe it is crucial for the teaching profession to support
alternative pathways into initial teacher education in an attempt to broaden the pool from
which the teacher workforce is recruited. International research findings (e.g. Grossman &
Loeb, 2008) demonstrate too that alternative pathways into teaching can have a positive
impact on student outcomes. Moreover, introducing alternative pathways in New Zealand
furthers a key recommendation of the Government’s Education Workforce Advisory Group,
suggesting that links between initial teacher education providers and schools should be
strengthened (Ministry of Education, 2010). The introduction of new pathways will thus
encourage innovation in initial teacher education more broadly, by providing new partnership
opportunities for universities and other providers, and by stimulating renewed dialogue about
the links between initial teacher education providers and effective teaching. Alternative
pathways need not be seen as competitive threats to traditional programmes; rather the
opportunity to learn from differing pathways is presented, therefore encouraging the
development of improved teacher education across all pathways as various programmes
learn from the best practices of others.

Alternative pathways have been introduced in many other countries, based on an
understanding that getting the right people to become teachers matters more than ensuring
they attend more traditional initial teacher education programmes, providing that the
alternative training and ongoing support in schools is of a high quality (in many cases this
alternative training and support is offered by university providers). Whelan notes that
‘Countries which have opened up these routes into teaching have been able to increase
both the number and quality of applicants as a result. England, for instance, introduced
employment-based routes into teaching in 1998. Enrolment on these routes expanded from
100 in the first year to more than 7,000 in 2006, accounting for 22% of new teachers. A large
proportion of these, including a disproportionately large number of men, had worked in
another profession for more than five years before entering teacher training. Official
evaluations found that these teachers were better qualified, more motivated, and stronger
teachers after their first two years of teaching than those who had entered the profession by
traditional routes; a finding common to similar programmes in other countries. They were
also more likely to be male, non-white, over 30, and intend to remain in teaching for at least

                                              3

Teach First NZ: Submission to NZ Teachers Council Review Committee                  August 2012

five years. So opening up additional routes into teaching appears to increase not only the
number and quality of applicants, but also the diversity of the teaching workforce’ (Whelan,
2009: 68-9).

Supporting alternative pathways into teaching in New Zealand will also contribute to making
the teaching profession a higher status choice for our country’s top graduates, who are often
aggressively recruited for positions in business, public service, or other professions, and who
therefore are often not attracted to teach. We reject the notion that the status or
attractiveness of the teaching profession is largely based on cultural or societal factors.
Rather, teaching needs to ensure it has a carefully developed strategy in order to be truly
competitive and attractive to our country’s most talented graduates. Teacher recruitment and
initial teacher education are inextricably linked with the status of the profession, with Whelan
noting that successful examples of alternative pathways into teaching ‘demonstrate that a
shift in the status of teaching among potential applicants can be achieved in a relatively short
time, without a corresponding shift in broader cultural attitudes towards education’ (Whelan,
2009: 59-60).

Practically speaking, employment-based programmes will enable highly sought after
individuals or those with young families to avoid accepting a substantial financial loss in
undertaking to complete one of the established initial teacher education programmes (whilst
we acknowledge that a limited number of scholarships are currently available). Increasing
the breadth of the pool of individuals interested in teaching will also assist to address the
imbalances in the current workforce by attracting more Māori and Pasifika people, more
men, more individuals who specialise in shortage subject areas, and greater future
leadership capacity, into teaching.

 Recommendation 2: Entry to initial teacher education programmes should be
 made more competitive by applying more rigorous entry standards to all
 programmes, and by implementing a national strategy to ensure the number of
 graduates is responsive to the needs of the teacher workforce.

New Zealand is currently in a cyclical situation of teacher over-supply (although the
workforce is ageing) and so, while we support the introduction of alternative pathways into
teaching, we do not intend to advocate for policies that would increase the actual number of
graduates from initial teacher education programmes, nationally. Incidentally, one of the
major advantages of alternative pathways is that their training places are often directly linked
to specific school employment needs (real vacancies), avoiding an excess supply of
graduates that is inherently created in traditional university-based programmes. In other
words, alternative pathways usually recruit candidates to directly match market demand.
Further, because of their employment-based nature, such forms of alternative pathways
usually demonstrate higher completion rates than traditional university-based programmes.

In order to attract a greater proportion of higher quality applicants, the profession should also
be actively working to ensure more rigorous entry standards are applied to initial teacher
education programmes, and systematically and innovatively promoting teaching to those
who otherwise may not have considered the profession (as a result, entry to teaching
becomes more competitive – a key characteristic of successful systems). Opening new
pathways has been demonstrated overseas to be one of the most successful strategies to
enable this and, with a national strategy to carefully manage the number of places available
across all programmes, will not lead to further over-supply of teachers. Whelan notes ‘In
many countries, teacher training programmes accept between two and four times as many
candidates as are actually required by the system. The unnecessary lack of selectivity has a
series of effects. It pushes down the status of the courses and makes them unattractive to

                                               4

Teach First NZ: Submission to NZ Teachers Council Review Committee               August 2012

those with the option to enter more selective programmes. The quality of the training falls,
both because the resources available are spread over a larger number of students, and
because the people on the courses are likely to be less capable and less committed. The
probability that graduates will find employment in teaching is reduced, because there is an
oversupply of teacher trainees, while at the same time, their chances of finding employment
in other areas falls because the courses they have taken are perceived as markers of low
ability by other employers. The combined effect of low requirements for entry into teacher
training and having too many people on the courses makes it even more difficult to attract
high-performing graduates into teaching training, and by implication, into the teaching
profession as a whole’ (Whelan, 2009: 63-64).

 Recommendation 3: Initial teacher education programme requirements and
 approval guidelines should be reviewed to support multiple pathways into
 teaching, including employment-based pathways.

As new pathways into teaching are introduced, we believe a strong case will emerge for a
complete review of policies concerning the requirements for, and approval of, initial teacher
education programmes. The current requirements for these programmes have not been
designed to support wide diversity in provision of initial teacher education, and have
demonstrated in some cases to be inflexible towards innovative programme approaches. For
example, while the guidelines appear to support ‘field-based programmes’, the nature of
some of the related requirements (e.g. ‘In three, four and one year field-based ITE
programmes, there must be a minimum of 14 weeks of practicum’) suggest that they have
not been designed to support programmes where student teachers are concurrently
employed in teaching positions (i.e. employment-based pathways). Also, the current away
practicum requirement that there ‘be a minimum of eight weeks of practicum away from the
home school’ is problematic for employment-based pathways and does not appear to take
into account differing lengths of programmes. The main difficulty currently presented,
therefore, is that potential employment-based initial teacher education programmes seeking
approval are subject to meet requirements that in some cases are not suitable for the
respective programme’s mode of delivery.

Additionally, having recently jointly undertaken the programme approval process with our
initial teacher education partner The University of Auckland, we have experienced a process
that appeared overly prescriptive and intrusive on university autonomy, given the existing
role and approval processes of the Committee on University Academic Programmes.
Revised guidelines that apply rigorous standards to programmes using an outcomes-based
approach (rather than overly prescribing programme design and related inputs) will
encourage innovation in programme design to accommodate the variation in individual
student teacher needs and experience, while ensuring that all programmes meet minimum
standards for graduating teachers. In England, for example, initial teacher education
programmes are accredited based on the quality of teachers they produce (as measured by
Ofsted inspections), rather than being heavily regulated in programme design (e.g. number
of hours of practicum, staffing requirements, etc). This, in turn, has encouraged a greater
emphasis on candidate selection and classroom experience. Until input-based restrictions
are relaxed in New Zealand, it will remain difficult for alternative pathways – and their
associated benefits – to become available here.

                                              5

Teach First NZ: Submission to NZ Teachers Council Review Committee                 August 2012

 Recommendation 4: The Limited Authority to Teach (LAT) provision should be
 reviewed to support multiple pathways into teaching, including employment-based
 pathways. Further, all LAT holders should be encouraged to actively work towards
 attaining teacher registration.

As new pathways into teaching are introduced, we believe a strong case will emerge for a
complete review of policies concerning the ability of student teachers to hold the authority to
teach in a school. For example, employment-based pathways to teacher registration require
the student teacher to be concurrently employed in a school teaching position. While the
LAT provision offers an existing mechanism for this to happen, its specific awarding criteria
and process will need to be reviewed in order to facilitate a more flexible and streamlined
process for student teachers, schools, and initial teacher education providers.

We believe, though, that with any increase in flexibility of the LAT provision there must also
be accompanying quality assurance processes to ensure that LATs are only issued to those
demonstrating they have the potential to meet the requirements for teacher registration –
particularly for LAT holders entering the classroom for the first time. We also believe that, in
order to preserve the profession of teaching, all individuals holding LAT status should be
encouraged to actively work towards attaining – through some form of teacher education –
teacher registration.

Teach First NZ also notes that the Government’s commitment to the Youth Guarantee
scheme (particularly the intended increase in provision of Trades Academy places) will
further strengthen the case for more flexibility in issuing of LATs, so that appropriately
qualified individuals (who may not hold teacher registration) are able to support delivery of
this initiative.

References

Grossman, P. & Loeb, S. (2008) Alternative Routes to Teaching: mapping the new
landscape of teacher education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Ministry of Education. (2010) A Vision for the Teaching Profession: Education Workforce
Advisory Group Report to the Minister of Education. Wellington: New Zealand Government.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2011) Building a High Quality
teaching profession: Lessons from around the world. OECD.

Whelan, F. (2009) Lessons Learned: how good policies produce better schools. London:
Fenton Whelan. (Michael Barber and Michael Fullan (Foreword)).

                                               6