Overview

Proposed changes to strengthen Teaching Council processes

Have your say on three proposals to strengthen and clarify Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (the Council) processes.

There are three proposals. They are to:
•    streamline teacher disciplinary processes run by the Council
•    ensure that teacher registration requirements are enforced by the Council
•    clarify how the Council is to consider the recent teaching experience of professional leaders in tertiary settings.

Click the link below to read the full discussion document.
Strengthening Teaching Council processes

For proposal one, the proposed changes are:

• raising the threshold for the mandatory referral of cases from the CAC to the Tribunal by linking the threshold to whether the Tribunal may need to consider suspension or cancellation of registration or practising certificates as a starting point;
• enabling the CAC to resolve cases that meet the definition of serious misconduct in the Education and Training Act 2020;
• removing the requirement for the CAC to reach agreement between the teacher and the complainant, but with a new process so parties can appeal to the Tribunal; and
• removing the power for the CAC to suspend practising certificates. All cases that may require suspension should be referred to the Tribunal.

For proposal 2, the proposed change is to make it explicit that the Teaching Council has a function to prosecute teachers and/or employers who breach teacher registration requirements.

As the professional body for teaching, it is a natural function of the Teaching Council to take prosecutions where it considers someone has breached these registration requirements.

For proposal 3, the proposed change is to clarify that the Teaching Council must exercise discretion when considering the recent teaching experience of professional leaders in tertiary organisations.

This change will mean that instructors and professional leaders in tertiary settings are treated the same when the Teaching Council considers their recent teaching experience for the purposes of renewing practising certificates.

More Information

For more information on Proposed changes to Teaching Council processes, click here.

Your Feedback

We welcome your feedback on these proposals. Your feedback will help shape and inform advice to government on the Teaching Council processes.

You can answer some or all of the questions in each section. If there are any questions you do not want to answer, simply skip over them. 

We encourage you to fill in the first set of questions to help us analyse and understand the perspectives of the wide range of people answering this survey. 

This consultation will be open until midnight on Wednesday 16 June.