There is a lot more to the problems in teacher education than a few small competitors for teachers' colleges. Yet "the market" continues to bother some teacher educators like Dialogue writer It seems what concerns them is that the new organisations educating our teachers might break out of an orthodoxy that is selling short not only teachers but our children.

Quality teaching makes a big difference to students. Various studies show that between 30 and 60 per cent of the difference in student achievement can be explained by the difference in teaching. It's a big issue because research also shows that we have a wider range of achievement among students in the same school than most other developed countries.

If low-achieving students get a run of good teachers, they will close the gap with their peers. If they get a run of less effective teachers, the gap will widen. Unfortunately, the longer that low-achieving students are at a school, the further they fall behind.

There are promising signs of change in the teaching profession. Teachers are getting used to using data about achievement to help them teach. This is not part of the training yet, but should be. Teachers are showing real interest in professional status and the standards required to convince the community they should be more highly regarded.

However, overall teacher training falls short of the clear professional standards the community wants to see, and it is some of the smaller new providers that are showing the way.

The core problem is that the profession does not have clear standards for who can be a teacher, and the vague standards it does have are not often implemented.

The selection process places a high reliance on individual providers assessing the personal qualities of applicants. The academic requirements are not onerous, and there is no common approach.

Entry standards would matter less if there were clear exit standards. There is no clear standard of teaching expertise for people leaving teachers' college for the classroom. In 1999 the Education Review Office found there were no standards for graduation that related to the curriculum which graduates went on to teach.

It is difficult for employers to interpret each institution's exit standards, and generally schools cannot rely on them. New teachers leave training while they are still learning basic competencies of teaching and classroom management.

The Teachers Council oversees registration but the standards it applies are not high. An international study of achievement in New Zealand (Timms) showed a lack of knowledge about maths, science and literacy is a persistent barrier to student achievement in these areas.

Research released this week shows that even experienced teachers need reskilling to teach numeracy effectively. If it costs millions extra in on-the-job training, what did they learn at teachers college?

On paper, the programme of support for beginning teachers - a two-year trial period for registration and progression hurdles in the industrial agreement - look good. But in practice the system is patchy and unfocused. It is not taken as seriously as it should be because the pervasive ethic is that every teacher is officially as effective as every other teacher. Students tell us this is not true.

Teacher training, as with much other training, has become too theoretical. Teachers tell me every day about the problems of managing children these days. I have enormous respect for teachers who do this well. It is a skill that has to be learned and practised. It certainly cannot be learned from a book or a lecture; it has to be learned in classrooms.

The research I have read says teachers should be in classrooms, with well-trained tutors supervising them for seven or eight-week blocks, to really learn the skills.

Most practical sessions are half that long, and student teachers do not have the amount of expert supervision they need. The best busy classroom teacher finds it difficult to oversee the training and pass on the techniques at the same time as teaching a class.

While a student can observe good teaching, there simply is not time for the amount of sustained feedback and practice that learning this sort of practical professional skill requires. Parents want to see the teaching profession set the hurdles high enough that they can assume their children will always get a competent, effective teacher. That is not the case. Some competition for our traditional teachers' colleges in ideas and training is likely to speed up the improvement.

Bill English, the National Party's education spokesman, is responding to the view of Peter Lyons that the market model for teacher training has produced replication and wastage but no significant improvement in quality.

The stench of school reviews rolls on out into the countryside. Rural parents should take a good look at the Invercargill experience and decide whether they want the same deal in central and western Southland. What’s happened in Invercargill? Primary schools in lower income areas have been dealt to, intermediate and middle schooling has disappeared completely and with the exception of Anglem, the secondary schools all feel a bit better in a bizarre arrangement with four form one to seven schools. The mediator idea turned out to be a shoddy political deal where the city leaders were taken in by a clever Minister. The parents were sold out.

Committed parents and teachers will spend the next 12 months doing the Minister’s dirty work, closing schools, sacking staff, and racing to get new buildings up in time without enough money. But they will do it to make sure the kids don’t miss out. And if they do it well, in a few years time the pupils might get as good a deal as they already had.

Like Verdon College, Central Southland has to consider whether a new set up will mean children who have traditionally gone to the intermediates in form one in Invercargill will now stay there instead of returning to Winton for their secondary school years. There are only 25 children a year involved, a tiny fraction of the total, but they are big consequences for rural primary schools.

Invercargill did not benefit from the moratorium on school network reviews. Rural Southland isn’t safe either. The small print says that there are three exceptions to the moratorium and one of those exceptions is when a school applies for a change of status. This means that if Central Southland feel they are forced to apply to become a form one to seven school, the Minister can decide to have a network review for rural schools. The moratorium won’t apply.

Central Southland has 14 contributing schools. A number of schools in its catchment have closed in the last ten years and only 3 of the rest are bigger than the Minister’s magic roll of 150. When he’s closed a school of 600 in Invercargill, schools of 50 and 60 look easy meat, no matter how good they are.

I want to find out how good these schools are. The Ministry of Education has assessment information about 100,000 children across the country. I’m willing to bet that when the performance information is public, it will show that our children get a better education than most in New Zealand. One reason is because with falling rolls, schools have had to do a good job to keep the students.

Then the schools could invite Helen Clark down. (Remember her, she used to come every few months to shower money, or at least promises of it, on the peasants). Parents could put their case to the organ grinder instead of putting up with the monkey. We cannot and should not let the Government do another network review closing good schools with supportive communities.

I’m only 41 but I’m starting to feel old fashioned. For instance, I have always thought fathers were men. Labour brought in legislation last week that now allows women to be fathers. Under this law, a woman who is the same sex partner of a mother will be “the father of the child”. Helen Clark says it’s just a technical issue - but the woman concerned will be called a father in the law, and she will have the rights and responsibilities of a father.

This is just one of a number of ways Helen Clark and Labour have set out to obliterate the family and marriage from the law. We had the matrimonial property changes, which removed the differences between a marriage and other sorts of de facto and lesbian and homosexual relationships. So a 25-year-old marriage with children and assets is the same as a three-year de facto homosexual relationship. Then the Families Commission law came along defining family as “any group of people with a psychological attachment” That includes the Mongrel mob, All Black supporters, Wrightsons stock agents and the kindergarten committee.

Now we have the Care of Children Bill including female fathers. It also confirms current law that a 15 year old girl can get an abortion without the parents knowing or agreeing. But the biggest problem is its philosophy that the fundamental legal relationship for a child is with the government, and parents are state sanctioned guardians if they behave themselves. I believe natural parents do have rights, like the right to know their 14 year old has had an abortion, and the right to expect the state to back them up, not to take their children from them. National MP Nick Smith has been fighting for that right and running into legal problems related to the Family Court where these decisions are made away from any public scrutiny.

The family, not the government is the basic building block of society. I say to Helen Clark, leave New Zealand families alone. It is the custom and practise of the people to raise children in two parent families, even if these parents shuffle around sometimes. The law should reflect what we do, not some academic theory from people who haven’t had the experience of being a parent.

The law shows respect for Maori custom by referring to whänau and adapting the law to suit. I ask Helen Clark why she can’t show some respect for another widespread custom, the nuclear family?

People in de facto or homosexual and lesbian relationships, or people using artificial reproduction need just laws. Parliament can change the law for them. But Helen Clark and Labour are using the needs of a small minority as an excuse for wiping marriage and family off the books. They have no understanding or respect for the family choices most people make. Labour cannot accept that families and parents are more important than a government. We will continue to fight for the families.

It’s not that long ago that official wisdom was there is no difference between girls and boys. Now apparently there is no difference between mums and dads. Most people can’t remember Paul Keating, the Australian prime minister, but he had a way with words. Questioned about gay marriage he said he didn’t think two blokes and a cocker spaniel was a family. These days a lot of people think it is family, or they don’t care. Being married with kids is just out of fashion. But things that work should always stay in fashion. The best reason to encourage males and females to get and stay married is that it works for everyone else, especially for children. It’s politically correct these days to believe that all relationships are the same. When it comes to children and contribution to the community, that’s not true. These things have been studied for years and there is one overwhelming conclusion from all the studies. The best way for a child to be brought up is by married parents, a mother and a father. These kids are more likely to do better at school, get in less trouble, are less likely to go to prison and end up with better incomes later on. Many children brought up in other circumstances succeed, but it’s harder for them

The reason is not that some children are naturally better people but that they get a better start. One of the things they learn from committed parents is resilience. Marriages last because people couples get over it; they deal with conflicts and disappointments and move on. Children who see this resilience are more likely to learn it, and more likely to have it. Married couples get stressed doing their parental job, but they should spare a thought for parents on their own or in short term uncommitted relationships. The evidence shows parents doing their best are usually under more financial pressure, more risk of unemployment and violence than married couples. Challenge is good for children, but too much is tough on them as it is on adults.

De facto relationships are more stressed than marriage and same sex couples even more so. It shows up in the statistics. |Marriages do break up, but same sex and defector relationships are shorter term, more likely to break up and more likely to have trouble with violence, drugs and alcohol. Some adults move between different sorts of relationships. Any time a child spends with two married parents improves their prospects.

Our children face a tough future because more adults are making these choices. The new same sex marriage laws will probably mean changes to adoption law to make sure these couples can adopt the children they can’t have themselves. Those children don’t get a choice of whether they have a mum and a dad. Some say it doesn’t matter. They’re wrong. The way a baby interacts with their mother and father develops different bits of their brain. Science backs up common sense and that’s why people will keep getting married, no matter what laws the government passes.

Voucher-funding does nothing to improve educational outcomes. It effectively privatises education, and results in vastly increased gaps between those who can afford to pay tens of thousands of dollars per year in top-up fees to enter former state schools - now elite schools - and middle-income families who live next door to those schools. The gap just keeps on getting bigger and bigger.
- Trevor Mallard, April 2004.

A voucher system is when the public money goes where the student goes. We already have vouchers in education. Every day New Zealanders aged from one month to 80 use a system hated by Government politicians and teacher unions.

Parents of a child under 5 can choose whether he or she goes to a community creche, a public or private kindergarten or a play centre.

The voucher has a different value depending on where the parents go - more at a public kindergarten, less at a private one. But if the child shows up, so does the money.

Tertiary education also runs on a voucher system. A student is required only to enrol and the money shows up. Anyone who meets entry criteria can go to any public or private tertiary provider.

In these sectors, parents and students have choices and they use them. They seem to like it that way. People make choices to fit their lives, not to make some ideological point.

Which university or polytechnic they attend will be influenced by where they live, where their friends or partners go, the costs of travel and the course and their perception of course quality. Which early childhood centre they use will be determined by opening hours, what parents think of the staff, where the child's friends go and whether it's on the way to work.

Funding follows the student in our schools, too. Any parent can enrol a child at any school that isn't zoned, and the money will follow the child. Recent figures have shown more and more are taking their children, and their funding, to integrated schools if they meet the entry criteria.

So parents use the choice, and not just for high-profile schools. In Timaru, 45 per cent of parents send their children past the nearest school. The balance of Timaru parents are also sending their children to a school of their choice - the nearest one.

Vouchers cannot be so bad if thousands of ordinary parents behave as if they have one. One of the reasons parents opposed mass school closures is that they reduced the choices they could make with their vouchers.

The closures are part of the Government's growing restrictions on where and how the voucher can be used. More than 400 schools are now zoned, from Auckland to Invercargill. No school is allowed to expand until all surrounding schools are full.

Under this Government, the value of the voucher has decreased each year if it is used at an independent school, dropping to about a quarter of what it is worth at state schools.

The restrictions are driven by a deeply held, left-wing prejudice shared by Mr Mallard that parents will make choices for the wrong reasons. He has said that real choice was when every school was a good school and every teacher was a good teacher.

That is daft. Parents do not and never will believe it. They shift suburbs and cities, take another job, or wish they could, to get their children to a preferred school.

There is so little relevant public information about school or teacher effectiveness that parents are left to decide how to use their vouchers for all sorts of practical and personal reasons Many, of course, believe the local school suits them and their children well.

So the voucher debate is simpler than it looks. Vouchers are not the big evil the Government and the teacher unions claim. New Zealand has a voucher system in early childhood and tertiary education, and for most schools. Where vouchers are allowed to work, they work by providing choice and lifting quality.

The financial differences Mr Mallard worries about happen right now. Schools pay for almost 4000 teachers outside the Government's central salary system. Many schools in better-off areas bring in up to $200,000 in community funds each year, though the Government won't release information about just how much.

The issue for debate is why parents are increasingly restricted in where they use the vouchers, and why some children are apparently worth less than others, depending on where they go to school.

Parents are not stupid. We do not send our children to school to fill the Government's classrooms, we send them to learn and to become good citizens. We cannot allow blinded ideology about vouchers to stand in the way of getting the best learning opportunities for every child.