The legislation that governs how education occurs in New Zealand is potentially undergoing a major overhaul. The Education Act, last updated in 1989, is about to be updated by the Government. As part of the way legislation works in NZ, we are now undergoing the first consultation on this update.

This means 6 weeks of public meetings and accepting submissions based upon a discussion document produced by the Ministry of Education. All the details can be found here.

Unfortunately the main discussion points I have heard teachers talking about with this though, is time: 6 weeks is too short, the time of year is ridiculous.

6 weeks seemed pretty short to me too, but my enquiries around this found that this is pretty standard for at this stage of legislation compared to the longer consultation periods during the Select Committee process. Now, I do get this time of year is ridiculous but give me a time of year when teachers aren’t busy? So I was disappointed to attend a local public meeting and find only 8 people there (and then to hear this is common across many of these meetings). Continue reading →