The Ministry of Education is projecting schools will be short 1250 teachers this year with the latest forecast showing demand outstripping supply.
The 2024 Teacher Demand and Supply Planning Projection has been released, which projects the demand and supply for the workforce from 2025 – 2027.
Deputy Secretary for Workforce Anna Welanyk says the report aligns with the global situation of a shortage of teachers.
“The are different drivers that actually affect what supply will look like but it certainly is the case that we have had issues with teacher supply over an extended period,” she said.
The most likely medium scenario show a shortage of 750 primary teachers, and 500 secondary teachers, in 2025.
“The reason for that is there is more classroom release time and non-contact time which is an important aspect to have available to a teacher that wasn’t in the 2023 report but is now baked into the 2024 report and projected forward over the next few years as a forecast,” Welanyk said.
Ministry of Education’s latest teacher demand and supply report projects a shortage of 1250 teachers under the most likely scenario. (Source: 1News)
The sector’s last collective agreement increased the allocation of time for teachers to prepare for lessons and complete administration outside the classroom.
The previous December 2023 supply and demand report projected a surplus of 1050 primary teachers and 61 secondary teachers in 2025 under a medium supply scenario.
A net migration gain of around 7500 primary students and 5100 secondary students in 2023/2024 is another factor driving the need for more teachers. A further 5200 students are projected to arrive in New Zealand this year.
The medium scenario continues with a estimated shortage of 260 primary teachers and 550 secondary teachers in 2026, before returning to a surplus of 260 primary teachers but a continued projected shortage of 330 secondary teachers in 2027.
Northland, Bay of Plenty and Nelson have the largest primary teacher shortages as a percentage, at 7% of the regions’ total teacher demand, while Taranaki has the largest secondary teacher shortage as a percentage of the region’s demand, at 6%.
‘It’s complex’
“It’s complex and the benefit of having the data we’ve now got shows us the situation we’ve got within regions so we will see a lot more about the problem that we’re trying to solve now that we’ve got the data to refer to,” Welanyk said.
The report states the Government’s $76.2 million investment in increasing teacher supply in 2023 and 2024 Budgets are reducing the shortage.
Initiatives that were already funded are also having an impact.
“Without these initiatives and additional investments, the supply of primary teachers would be worse, meaning greater projected shortages,” the report states.
“This would mean a smaller pool of teachers for schools to recruit from, as well as reduced opportunity to support the distribution of primary teachers across the country, impacting our ‘hardest-to-staff’ primary schools most.”
It’s the same situation for secondary teachers.
The initiatives are expected to lead to an additional 600 primary teachers and 900 secondary teachers joining the workforce in 2025 under the most likely scenario.
“It definitely is a challenge, you know it is a global challenge to attract teachers and to retain them but we think the initiatives we’ve got lined up at the moment which are getting very good traction both domestically to encourage people into teaching, career changes… we’ve also got a very high level of interest from overseas teachers with a range of skills including STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) that would like to move to New Zealand,” Welanyk said.
“We’re looking at ways of focusing our attention on opportunities to generate teachers as quickly as possible.”
Welanyk wouldn’t comment on whether another funding bid has been made for teacher supply initiatives ahead of the May Budget.
“All I can say is there’s a sharp focus from the Minister on teacher supply and I guess you’ll have to find out shortly.”
