International Summit on the Teaching Profession – April 2025
“The New Zealand Government needs to lift its game, as all the other countries present at the ISTP clearly understood the importance of early childhood education.”
It was a privilege as Te Manukura | President to represent Aotearoa at the recent International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) conference in Reykjavík, Iceland.
For the first time, the conference had a big focus on early childhood education. I was able to speak about the current challenges our early childhood kaiako and kaimahi face in Aotearoa with our Government driving an agenda which undermines high quality ECE and pay for early childhood teachers.
What is the ISTP and how does it work?
The International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) brings together education ministers, union leaders and other teacher leaders from high-performing and rapidly improving education systems to identify best practices and engage in open conversations on how best to strengthen the teaching profession and raise student achievement. This year’s summit involved 25 ministers of education from 25 countries, as well as union delegations from each country. NZEI Te Riu Roa and PPTA represented unions from Aotearoa.
There was also representation from the Ministry of Education, including the Secretary of Education. One place is reserved for an education practitioner (a teacher!) – who, this year, was Paeone Goonan, an NZEI Te Riu Roa Te Reo Areare representative.
What did we discuss?
The summit theme is circulated six months’ ahead of time and requires attendees to begin to do some work together about the themes.
At this year’s summit, we discussed equity and equality in education, quality education, AI, and student agency. The challenges we face around the world are similar: teacher shortages, equity, and access to quality education.
It was clear that other countries have education ministers who are willing to work alongside unions to fix education.
However, as far as New Zealand goes – we all know there are challenges in terms of getting around the table with the Minister and Ministry.
Early childhood education in Aotearoa is also in a unique position in that the Minister for Education, Erica Stanford, is not the Minister for ECE; instead, the minister responsible for ECE is our Associate Minister for Education, David Seymour.
Our Associate Minister is also the Minister for Regulation and has just completed a review of ECE, which shows a serious conflict of interest in terms of getting the best outcomes for tamariki and kaiako in ECE.
At the summit, I explained the serious implications the review’s recommendations – if implemented – will have on the sector.
What are the solutions?
A key takeaway for me from the summit was that countries share the same challenges.
I laid out the solutions we see as important:
1. Lift the value of early childhood education.
2. Qualified teachers are essential.
3. Pay teachers appropriately.
4. Provide adequate resourcing.
5. Early childhood education is a community good and requires their input.
6. Parents need to be involved.
7. Lift the health and wellbeing of the teachers and children.
Our commitments
At the end of the conference, country delegations are asked to make three commitments they’ll work towards and write a progress report on.
These commitments have to be jointly agreed by the unions and the Minister for Education.
Our overall statement calls on New Zealand to look beyond our shores and learn from countries implementing good change in education. Our commitments are: “Despite facing similar challenges, we have the opportunity to learn from each other, focus on what works to raise student achievement, and leverage the relationships between our countries. No one jurisdiction has the answer, but a shared focus on achieving excellent and equitable outcomes for our students unites our purpose.
Focus on socio-emotional skills, self-regulation, oral language acquisition in early learning.
To develop the provision of learning support so that we are delivering the right service to the right child at the right time to raise achievement and close the equity gap.
Take the next step with implementation of clear supported leadership pathways and career development for aspiring and in-service school leaders.
We will meet with the Minister in six months’ time to assess our progress on these.
What do we think? Our view is that we can’t achieve commitment #1 – the commitment to focus on socio-emotional skills, self-regulation, and early oral language skills in ECE – without qualified teachers.
It simply can’t happen without the skills and expertise of trained and qualified teachers in centres, and improvements in teachers’ working conditions, such as quality adult to child ratios and increased learning support for children who need it, which enable high quality learning for all tamariki to occur.
The Government needs to stop its business-driven reforms which place profit ahead of tamariki and focus instead on solving the real issues kaiako, kaimahi, and parents have been talking about for years.
Serious investment is needed in learning support, in order to enable teachers to teach, and students to learn. Career pathways and pay progression are also important. To keep teachers in the sector, addressing the conditions in which they work every day is what will also help to retain our them in ECE. Everyone benefits when working conditions are improved – teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions. Here's a picture of Paeone (left) and I, representing you all at the Summit. We were proud to be able to talk about the things which have contributed to student achievement and outcomes, such as Te Whāriki, our world-leading ECE curriculum.
We were happy to be able to take this opportunity to hold our Minister to account, and through our discussions, show that the direction we take in New Zealand needs to align with that of high achieving countries internationally.
