Labour will unveil a suite of changes aimed at boosting teacher quality today, including a new body with the power to take good teachers out of their classroom and re-deploy them to work with other teachers and schools for up to two years.
The policies will be Labour's response to National's proposal to pay good teachers and principals more and require them to work with others.
It includes a new School Advisory Service which Education Spokesman Chris Hipkins said would be able to second good teachers to other schools for up to two years and manage professional development. The service would include a College of Leadership which would set standards those applying to be principals and other leadership roles had to meet. It would also develop pre-appointment training for teachers who wanted to be principals.
"You need to be more than just a good teacher to become a school principal. You have to leadership characteristics."
He said Labour would also introduce a more rigorous pre-screening programme for teacher education to ensure those who got in were good quality and had good chances of finding employment.
