Last week Parliament passed the Education Amendment Bill, creating a new professional body for teachers, Educanz, which replaces the New Zealand Teachers’ Council (NZTC).

The secondary teachers’ union president Angela Roberts said “teachers will not take this lying down”. This is probably because unions will have no representation on the board of this new body created to regulate teachers. 

Though it is healthy to keep industrial and professional interests separate, Roberts is partially justified in her response. Of course Educanz is supposed to be independent from government (as well as the unions), but all appointments to the board will be made by the Minister of Education. Moreover, at least in the transitional phase, Educanz will be funded by government.

In theory, Educanz will be able to comment independently on government policy. I might be missing something here, but this seems difficult when appointments are made by the Minister and funding comes from government.

Independence from the teacher unions is good for conflict of interest reasons. However, Roberts says that the way Educanz is set up sends a message that teachers cannot be trusted and must be externally regulated.

So are there ways that teachers can prove they can regulate themselves? The unions should consider how they can adapt their model. They could, for example, consider how they could separate into professional and industrial arms.  A professional arm of the unions could be a self-regulating body owned by teachers.

And how about ground-up methods of self-regulation, where teachers rally together and prove their professionalism, not to the government of the day that chops and changes every few years, but to the people who stand to benefit the most from a good education: students, and their parents.

Recently, the Washington Post wrote an article titled “to improve schools, let teachers run them”, about 70 U.S. schools that are completely teacher run, where kids are engaged and achieving.

Here is the rub. They are charter schools.

Teacher unions see charter schools as a threat to their existence, but they could also provide some opportunities to improve the status of teachers in the public eye. Imagine, for example, a professional arm of the PPTA setting up a fund to sponsor a group of teachers to start New Zealand’s first teacher-led charter school.   

I am skeptical about whether Educanz can lift the professional status of teachers.  But in the meantime, if teachers are unhappy about being regulated by government, they could think about mechanisms to self-regulate.