Education bodies, initial teacher education providers and officials from the Ministry of Education are meeting in Wellington to discuss solutions to the country’s ongoing teacher shortage.
The summit — the first time the groups have met as one on the issue — would continue on Tuesday, hosted by the New Zealand Educational Institute Te Riu Roa.
“We have agreement across everyone who’s come to our summit that there’s an accumulating pressure on the workforce of teachers,” NZ Educational Institute president Mark Potter told 1News.
“It’s been coming a long time. It’s our own climate change and the risk to education is too high for us not to address that.”
He said a long-term workforce strategy was required by the sector and the Ministry of Education together.
“What we want is a very clear idea that can be applied over the next 10, 15, 20 years to say, ‘this is what we’re about’ and then that will stop a lot of the knee-jerk changes that we are getting all the time in New Zealand in education,” Potter said.
The role of teaching was becoming less desirable, he said.
“People are saying ‘We don’t know if we want to do such a tough job that is not competitive with other professions [remuneration]’.
“We have young people saying ‘I can get a job that will pay me more, I’ll work less and I’ll be less stressed’. We’ve got to turn that around.”
Some schools around the country reported their principals were having to take classes to fill staff gaps due to sickness or vacancies.
Randwick School principal Andrew Wooster was teaching a class yesterday, as the school couldn’t find relievers when staff were sick.
Wooster said he hasn’t had a morning tea or lunch break in the past six months, and he hasn’t had time to review new curriculum material as he’s focused on keeping classes running.
“The teaching workforce in the general education sector has just had a gutsful — and we’re at breaking point.”
Recruiting the right staff was another challenge. “The most recent job that I advertised last term was for a full-time teacher and we had no New Zealand applicants for that position.
“We were lucky, lucky enough to fill it with an internal applicant,” Wooster said.
He said students with higher learning needs were also affected when he taught classes as there was less time to check in with them, as he normally did.
Education Minister Erica Stanford spoke to principals in Invercargill about the recruitment problem last Friday.
Overseas recruitment not without its challenges
One of the principals, Wendy Ryan from Ascot Community School, said overseas recruitment wasn’t always the solution from her experience.
She said the $3450 finder’s fee provided by the Ministry of Education to offset recruitment costs for hiring an international teacher didn’t cover the total cost for immigration checks, with the school covering the rest from its budget.
“The agency could only supply about five, maybe six applicants and, really, not all of them were suitable for teaching in New Zealand or in my school or my context,” Ryan said.
Once the overseas teacher had been recruited, another downside was that it took six weeks to start teaching, leaving leadership staff to teach students for weeks.
Ryan said a deputy principal was teaching full time and she was teaching two days a week herself because of the recruitment issue.
This meant the deputy principal had to juggle the teaching role with their roles as deputy principal and the school’s special education needs coordinator (SENCO), Ryan said.
She said there was only so much time the deputy principal had for meetings after 3pm, and this role was being affected as a result of her having to fill the teacher gap.
New curriculum requirements
Teachers were also required to participate in professional development as part of the introduction of new literacy and maths curriculums, but sometimes there weren’t staff to fill the gaps so teachers couldn’t attend, Ryan said.
Both principals were calling on the Government to slow down the roll-out of new literacy and maths curriculums, set to be introduced next year, saying schools didn’t have time to prepare when they were constantly trying to fill teaching gaps.
A briefing note for Education Minister Erica Stanford provided by the Ministry of Education in May this year included data for students that had enrolled in teacher training up to April 2024 to provide an indicative picture of the future workforce.
Overall, the number of students enrolled in a qualification decreased from 2785 in 2023 to 2715 in 2024.
This included a 7% decrease in early childhood initial teacher education student numbers and a 2.2% decrease in primary initial teacher education student numbers.
The indicative data showed a 3.6% increase in the number of students signed up for secondary initial teacher education.
Education Minister: Sustainable teaching is a key priority
In a statement, Stanford said developing a sustainable teacher workforce was one of her key priorities.
“I have tasked the Ministry of Education with creating a comprehensive strategy in this space,” she stated.
“I have also tasked the Ministry with providing an urgent plan to address the relief teaching supply challenges and expect creative and innovative solutions.”
The Minister said she has sought advice from the Teaching Council on what action could be taken to help with recruitment. The organisation managed the registration of teachers, including qualification requirements.
This year’s Budget included $53 million to train and recruit 1500 teachers from New Zealand and overseas, the Minister stated.
She said the School Onsite Training Programme has been expanded to 1200 places for trainee teachers.
“Applications for interested providers just opened and interest has exceeded the number of places available.”