Education Minister Jan Tinetti fronts media after privileges committee.
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Industrial action from secondary school teachers that meant students missed out on several days of lessons is not enough to force changes to end-of-year exams but Education Minister Jan Tinetti isn’t ruling it out if further disruptions occur.
She is also indicating consultation will begin ahead of this year’s election that could inform legislative reform of 72-year-old attendance regulations that are corrupting attendance data, which is a key election battleground.
It comes as the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (Te Wehengarua) withdraws all strike action as it enters an arbitration process aimed at resolving the industrial dispute between secondary teachers and the Government.
Tinetti, alongside a range of Education Ministry staff, appeared before the Education and Workforce select committee this morning to field questions from members regarding the money devoted to education in Budget 2023.
National education spokesperson Erica Stanford referenced the industrial action in her questioning of Tinetti about the disruption it was causing students like her daughter, who had been required to sit several internal assessments during the time teachers were refusing to teach certain year groups on specific days.
Education Minister Jan Tinetti says it's not yet necessary to make changes to end-of-year exams after disruption to learning. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Tinetti, who was limited in what she could say about negotiations, said she was “as frustrated as anyone else” that students were missing out on education.
However, she was confident teachers would utilise various techniques to make up for the lost learning time.
She referenced work being done by the Education Ministry and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to establish whether there was any need to alter how assessments and examinations at the end of the year would be conducted.
The entities were also assessing what impact any other disruptive events, including severe weather events, would have on end-of-year exams.
Speaking to the Herald after the meeting, Tinetti said she didn’t believe changes to exams were necessary as a result of the industrial action and the severe weather events earlier this year.
“I don’t think we’re close, close [to needing to make changes], that’s my impression.
“What I can say is that when the officials are working through that framework, they’re looking at how many days [have been] disrupted and what that would mean.
“They are working through this quite urgently at this point in time, but not only because of the strikes, because of the likes of the flooding that we’ve had as well.”
She wouldn’t give an indication when decisions would have to be made on any changes, noting NCEA had a good level of flexibility which meant a decision did not need to be made imminently.
Another matter raised in the committee meeting was attendance data - something that had landed Tinetti in front of Parliament’s highest court after her office and the Education Ministery appeared to coordinate the timing of an attendance data release with an education-related announcement.
The topic was also a key election issue as children disconnected from education had been clearly linked with the rise in violent crime being conducted by young people.
Stanford questioned Tinetti on the thousands of students unenrolled in school and how it was taking as much as 260 days to re-engage children in school in some regions.
Also after the meeting, Tinetti said it was not an acceptable length of time to re-enrol children in school, which was why the Government had invested roughly $70 million to improve school attendance, including boosting the number of truancy officers.
Her goal was to ensure re-enrolment occurred within three to six months after a child left school.
In Term 1, Tinetti said there were 9000 children nationwide who weren’t enrolled, although she claimed about half of those shouldn’t have been counted as they were in the process of being enrolled.
That limitation had partly informed a decision to commit about $7m to updating how attendance data was recorded.
Tinetti indicated that upgrade could be done in conjunction with the reform of out-of-date attendance regulations.
Set in 1951, the regulations did not allow for nuances in school attendance which then skewed the data that was used in public debates on truancy, Tinetti said.
National education spokesperson Erica Stanford (right) with party leader Christopher Luxon. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Tinetti said she had asked ministry officials to start consultation “quickly” before the election.
“Obviously any decisions would be post-election because we wouldn’t be making decisions now, pre-election, but why can’t we get consultation started now?”
She reinforced her view that any changes would be done following consultation with other political parties.
Stanford told the Herald later today she was open to working with Tinetti on changing the regulations but only if there was clear evidence they were negatively influencing the data.
“If there was an issue that arose out of the regulations that meant that data was being skewed, of course I’d be willing to take a look at it, but it’s never been brought up with me.”
On re-enrolment targets, Stanford said it was “grim” that six months was an acceptable time between enrolments.
“Once a child has lost that much learning, it is much more difficult to re-enrol them.”
She didn’t offer a view on whether end-of-year examinations should be changed without seeing robust analysis that recommended it.
The arbitration process between teachers and the Government would be held in private and was expected to take three weeks from the time the panel convened. The Government would be given two further weeks to respond to the panel’s recommendations. PPTA members would also be able to vote on a potential settlement during that time.
