Teacher Education providers may lose funding if they do not make the grade under new regulations being brought in by the Teachers Council.

The new Approval, Review and Monitoring Processes and Requirements for Initial Teacher Education (ITE) Programmes come into effect next year bringing with them more stringent monitoring of the country’s ITE programmes.

Teachers Council Director Dr Peter Lind says while the council itself doesn’t have the power to close down programmes; if it does not approve their graduates from those programmes they will not be accepted for provisional registration.

Given that Tertiary Education Commission funding is based on the fact that graduates can achieve registration, he says programmes which cannot guarantee this may lose their funding.

Dr Lind says another focus of the new requirements is to encourage "collaborative partnerships between teacher educators (those teaching student teachers) and teacher practitioners (those teaching in schools and early childhood services)".

As part of this teachers will be involved in the approval and review of ITE programmes.

All new ITE programmes will now have to be approved by the Teachers Council based on the report of an Approval Panel which will include two teachers from the sector in which the programme is focused.

Once approved ITE programmes will be monitored every year for the first one, three or four years depending on the length of the programme, and then every two years, based on a report by an appointed monitor and self-review by the provider.

In the sixth year of its delivery each programme will again be reviewed by a panel including a teacher from the relevant sector.

The teachers for each panel will be drawn from a national core group set up by the Teachers Council.

While the selection process has not yet been finalised, it is likely that the Council will call for nominations from each teaching sector (ECE, primary, secondary and Maori medium) with supporting CVs and references. A selection panel will then put forward recommendations to the Council which will make the final appointments.

Dr Lind says the Council also plans to conduct a number of random national surveys of employers and graduates to identify benchmarks and baseline data of the perceptions of the quality of ITE programmes.

ITE providers will also be required to regularly survey their graduates and employers to obtain satisfaction levels.

Practising teachers will also get a say in the quality of people accepted onto programmes.

ITE providers will be expected to work locally with teachers during the selection process and conduct visual interviews with applicants either in person or using technology such as webcams to see how effectively they can communicate.

Dr Lind says the new requirements have been drafted to work alongside the new Graduating Teacher Standards and the Council has decided it is appropriate that the new standards should be "requirements" rather than "guidelines"  because the Council wanted to be more explicit with providers about its expectations for programmes.

The new requirements will apply to all ITE providers including universities, polytechnics and private providers.

The requirements will come into effect for all new programmes approved from January next year and for programmes reviewed from 1 January 2011. All programmes will have to meet the requirements by January 2013.