Among the understandable outrage over the Timothy Fisher scandal and the Teaching Council there was one incident which doesn’t inspire much confidence for the future of this organization which is responsible for the registration and regulation of the country’s 124,000 teachers.
Fisher was the sexual deviant who was finally sent to prison last year for crimes committed while he was a teacher, crimes the Teaching Council knew about as far back as 2015 but it never intervened or cancelled his registration, thus allowing him to continue working as a teacher.
Education Minister Erica Stanford has now completely restructured the Teaching Council and all members of the governing council are appointed by her. The new Chair is Patrick Walsh.
For the best part of two decades he was principal at Rotorua’s John Paul College before moving back to Auckland and landing the plum job as headmaster of Sacred Heart College in 2022.
As the newish Teaching Council Chair he fronted the fallout from Katherine Anderson KC’s report into how useless the Council was during the Fisher case.
Appearing on Newstalk ZB the morning after the report came out, Mike Hosking excused Walsh from any culpability into not dealing with Fisher by stating at the outset: “…important to point out that you only arrived in July this year, so you inherited this. Were you shocked?”
Walsh must have thought that this was his lucky day. His feet would not be held to the fire.
It doesn’t take much research to find that Walsh, a long time teacher union man after being president of the Secondary Principals Association (SPANZ) for 9 years, was an elected member of the Teaching Council from 2019, years when the Council knew of Timothy Fisher but did nothing about him.
That Hosking and his production team didn’t use this easily found fact to push Walsh on what the hell was going on is a poor reflection on an influential media outlet.
Walsh could have corrected the record on-air to Hosking, but he didn’t. Make of that what you will.
He then spent a couple of minutes issuing the predictable platitudes – we dropped the ball, we should have been safeguarding children etc etc ….
Then to finish, a disturbing reaction from him to Hosking’s question: “Can you say in front of the nation, this could never, would never, happen again?”
There was a significant pause, a sure sign the interviewee is uncomfortable.
But then this.
“I couldn’t, hand on heart, say that. But the processes we’re putting in place will make that rare indeed.”
So it could happen again!
There is quite the back story to the Teaching Council. Up till 1989 there was no formal teacher registration system and teachers were hired by education boards which covered a provincial area or a group of high schools.
They had to have a trained teacher certificate obtainable after graduating from a state-run teachers college or university, and once in the classroom their expertise or otherwise was monitored bi-annually by Department of Education inspectors.
The system worked pretty well for 102 years. My parents, sister and late first wife were all part of it.
Many still ask if it wasn’t broke, why was it fixed?
But David Lange introduced his Tomorrow’s Schools scheme in 1989, scrapping the area boards, giving every school its own board and introducing teacher registration through the Teacher Registration Board (TRB). It was hardly a raging success. For a time registration was even voluntary!
But the key issue was that the TRB had limited direct accountability to the teaching profession itself.
Then Labour Education Minister Trevor Mallard tightened the system in 2002 establishing the Teachers Council with 11 members, 7 of whom would be elected. It was the start of the teacher unions beginning to flex their muscles in the teacher registration space.
The name changed in 2015 to the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (EDUCANZ) where all 9 members would be appointed by the Minister, at that time in a National led government.
But Chris Hipkins became the Education Minister three years later and in 2018, changed the name to the Teaching Council and reintroduced elected members meaning the unions could install a majority – 7 to 6 – over appointed members.
The system allowed Nicola Ngarewa, sister of Debbie and now principal of Spotswood College in New Plymouth, to become chair of the Teaching Council from 2019 to 2022. She was appointed by Hipkins.
An on-line biography of her states she’s “committed to disrupting traditional education models.”
(Among her initiatives at Spotswood College, according to Stuff, “is a new curriculum, based on international research, where students can create their own timetables around their own interests, and an optional wellness centre.”
In the last three years Spotswood College has had NCEA Level 3 pass rates under 45 percent of the cohort and University Entrance attained by under 20 percent of the school leavers.)
Also prominent on the Teaching Council in recent years has been Ripeka Lessels, now the President of the primary teachers’ union, the NZEI.
She was appointed to the Council in 2019, at the same time as Patrick Walsh, and became Deputy Chair in 2022. Her role as NZEI President began in 2024.
Erica Stanford has said she’s “not sure” if Mrs Lessels’ role as the NZEI leader “is tenable anymore.”
Since Nicola Ngarewa finished as Teaching Council chair in 2022, a woman named Robyn Baker was in charge for nearly three years. She’s a former CEO of the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, the organisation dedicated to, among other priorities, “improving equity in education” and “centring indigenous knowledge in education.”
Chris Hipkins’ mother Rose retired as the Chief Researcher there last year.
The Teaching Council also had another scandal to deal with in recent times.
Its CEO Lesley Hoskin finally resigned earlier this year after it was revealed her husband’s company Clemenger was awarded $1.7 million in contracts for consultancy work.
So Erica Stanford is absolutely right in dealing to the Council. The Hoskin affair, then a scathing report on the culture, effectiveness and priorities of the Council by consultant Debbie Francis and now the Anderson KC report on Timothy Fisher add up to a sorry story.
The Council was dysfunctional, but Stanford hasn’t helped matters either by the people she’s appointed.
Former Westlake Boys High principal David Ferguson was the Chair for barely a year, during which time it was revealed he’d received $750,000 in government funding to set up a private teacher training facility, the Teachers Institute.
How could Stanford have a founder and Chief Executive of a private teacher training institution in a role as chair of the body which registers graduate and other teachers? Has she never heard of a concept called conflict of interest?
So Ferguson moved on and in July this year Stanford made Walsh the chair, part of the furniture which was there supervising the shambles of the last seven years!
That’s something the country’s largest radio audience should have known last week.
What all this suggests is that teacher registration, now fully paid for by the government, has been fraught with political and ideological issues since the introduction of the concept during Tomorrow’s Schools nearly 40 years ago.
A return to the time of school inspectors is probably too much to ask but we should remember that was an era when New Zealand educational achievement was world leading, and teachers went in front of a classroom with advanced numeracy and literacy skills!
For now Stanford has put herself in charge of the Teaching Council member appointment process.
However we all know what will happen if Chris Hipkins becomes Prime Minister again after November 7. The PPTA and NZEI will push the case for their leaders to be back in charge there.
Something as seemingly straightforward as deciding who is and who is not fit to be a teacher should not be this hard.
For the sake of our education outcomes and our children’s future we should consider the Timothy Fisher case and the Teaching Council response when we vote.
Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack - Where this article was sourced.
For the best part of two decades he was principal at Rotorua’s John Paul College before moving back to Auckland and landing the plum job as headmaster of Sacred Heart College in 2022.
As the newish Teaching Council Chair he fronted the fallout from Katherine Anderson KC’s report into how useless the Council was during the Fisher case.
Appearing on Newstalk ZB the morning after the report came out, Mike Hosking excused Walsh from any culpability into not dealing with Fisher by stating at the outset: “…important to point out that you only arrived in July this year, so you inherited this. Were you shocked?”
Walsh must have thought that this was his lucky day. His feet would not be held to the fire.
It doesn’t take much research to find that Walsh, a long time teacher union man after being president of the Secondary Principals Association (SPANZ) for 9 years, was an elected member of the Teaching Council from 2019, years when the Council knew of Timothy Fisher but did nothing about him.
That Hosking and his production team didn’t use this easily found fact to push Walsh on what the hell was going on is a poor reflection on an influential media outlet.
Walsh could have corrected the record on-air to Hosking, but he didn’t. Make of that what you will.
He then spent a couple of minutes issuing the predictable platitudes – we dropped the ball, we should have been safeguarding children etc etc ….
Then to finish, a disturbing reaction from him to Hosking’s question: “Can you say in front of the nation, this could never, would never, happen again?”
There was a significant pause, a sure sign the interviewee is uncomfortable.
But then this.
“I couldn’t, hand on heart, say that. But the processes we’re putting in place will make that rare indeed.”
So it could happen again!
There is quite the back story to the Teaching Council. Up till 1989 there was no formal teacher registration system and teachers were hired by education boards which covered a provincial area or a group of high schools.
They had to have a trained teacher certificate obtainable after graduating from a state-run teachers college or university, and once in the classroom their expertise or otherwise was monitored bi-annually by Department of Education inspectors.
The system worked pretty well for 102 years. My parents, sister and late first wife were all part of it.
Many still ask if it wasn’t broke, why was it fixed?
But David Lange introduced his Tomorrow’s Schools scheme in 1989, scrapping the area boards, giving every school its own board and introducing teacher registration through the Teacher Registration Board (TRB). It was hardly a raging success. For a time registration was even voluntary!
But the key issue was that the TRB had limited direct accountability to the teaching profession itself.
Then Labour Education Minister Trevor Mallard tightened the system in 2002 establishing the Teachers Council with 11 members, 7 of whom would be elected. It was the start of the teacher unions beginning to flex their muscles in the teacher registration space.
The name changed in 2015 to the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (EDUCANZ) where all 9 members would be appointed by the Minister, at that time in a National led government.
But Chris Hipkins became the Education Minister three years later and in 2018, changed the name to the Teaching Council and reintroduced elected members meaning the unions could install a majority – 7 to 6 – over appointed members.
The system allowed Nicola Ngarewa, sister of Debbie and now principal of Spotswood College in New Plymouth, to become chair of the Teaching Council from 2019 to 2022. She was appointed by Hipkins.
An on-line biography of her states she’s “committed to disrupting traditional education models.”
(Among her initiatives at Spotswood College, according to Stuff, “is a new curriculum, based on international research, where students can create their own timetables around their own interests, and an optional wellness centre.”
In the last three years Spotswood College has had NCEA Level 3 pass rates under 45 percent of the cohort and University Entrance attained by under 20 percent of the school leavers.)
Also prominent on the Teaching Council in recent years has been Ripeka Lessels, now the President of the primary teachers’ union, the NZEI.
She was appointed to the Council in 2019, at the same time as Patrick Walsh, and became Deputy Chair in 2022. Her role as NZEI President began in 2024.
Erica Stanford has said she’s “not sure” if Mrs Lessels’ role as the NZEI leader “is tenable anymore.”
Since Nicola Ngarewa finished as Teaching Council chair in 2022, a woman named Robyn Baker was in charge for nearly three years. She’s a former CEO of the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, the organisation dedicated to, among other priorities, “improving equity in education” and “centring indigenous knowledge in education.”
Chris Hipkins’ mother Rose retired as the Chief Researcher there last year.
The Teaching Council also had another scandal to deal with in recent times.
Its CEO Lesley Hoskin finally resigned earlier this year after it was revealed her husband’s company Clemenger was awarded $1.7 million in contracts for consultancy work.
So Erica Stanford is absolutely right in dealing to the Council. The Hoskin affair, then a scathing report on the culture, effectiveness and priorities of the Council by consultant Debbie Francis and now the Anderson KC report on Timothy Fisher add up to a sorry story.
The Council was dysfunctional, but Stanford hasn’t helped matters either by the people she’s appointed.
Former Westlake Boys High principal David Ferguson was the Chair for barely a year, during which time it was revealed he’d received $750,000 in government funding to set up a private teacher training facility, the Teachers Institute.
How could Stanford have a founder and Chief Executive of a private teacher training institution in a role as chair of the body which registers graduate and other teachers? Has she never heard of a concept called conflict of interest?
So Ferguson moved on and in July this year Stanford made Walsh the chair, part of the furniture which was there supervising the shambles of the last seven years!
That’s something the country’s largest radio audience should have known last week.
What all this suggests is that teacher registration, now fully paid for by the government, has been fraught with political and ideological issues since the introduction of the concept during Tomorrow’s Schools nearly 40 years ago.
A return to the time of school inspectors is probably too much to ask but we should remember that was an era when New Zealand educational achievement was world leading, and teachers went in front of a classroom with advanced numeracy and literacy skills!
For now Stanford has put herself in charge of the Teaching Council member appointment process.
However we all know what will happen if Chris Hipkins becomes Prime Minister again after November 7. The PPTA and NZEI will push the case for their leaders to be back in charge there.
Something as seemingly straightforward as deciding who is and who is not fit to be a teacher should not be this hard.
For the sake of our education outcomes and our children’s future we should consider the Timothy Fisher case and the Teaching Council response when we vote.
Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack - Where this article was sourced.
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