National Teaching & Learning Conference 2010 - day one morning

A wonderful powhiri welcome to Ucol and the annual (4th) National Teaching & Learning Conference at UCOL in Palmerston North.  Annette Aubrey, one of the organisers opened the proceedings with usual housekeeping and plans for the other conference sessions. Official welcomes from UCOL CE Paul McElroy and UCOL council chair, Trevor Goodwin followed.

Opening address was from Hon. Steven Joyce, Minister for Tertiary Education who provided a succinct but clear overview of why the tertiary sector is important to New Zealand and how it can better contribute to the betterment of New Zealanders' lives.  He summarised the need to move away from the consumption and economy based economy growth in the past years towards the need to have productivity growth in the contributing sectors which contribute to the economy (agriculture for one, education another example). Need to provide quality education, improve performance (through measuring and setting performance targets) and obtain value for money by removing low performance entities and financial incentives to improve student performantce.

The minister is supportive of ensuring the continued development of capability in the tertiary sector (better teachers) to ensure government goals of better outcomes for all NZers can be attained.  On to the afternoon with workshop sessions, keynote by Dr.Mason Durie and panel discussion.