Tough times for teachers discourage new recruits

Low pay, big workloads and growing levels of abuse are among factors discouraging people from teaching, according to a Northland Post Primary Teachers' Association boss.

A PPTA report has highlighted nationwide staffing issues including difficulty finding maths and science teachers and staff leaving for jobs in other industries and to retire. The report follows a term one survey of secondary and composite school principals about their staffing situations.

PPTA Northland central regional chairman Micky Nogher said teachers had effectively experienced a pay cut for the past five years when inflation was taken into account.

"People are reluctant to move into teaching purely as they can get better salaries elsewhere," he said.

The workload for teachers was also "phenomenal" and increasing, he said. Staff were reluctant to step into middle management positions, where they had to teach classes on top of other duties.

Mr Nogher said highly trained and experienced staff were also leaving the profession as they could not endure the growing levels of verbal and physical abuse they faced on a daily basis. Staff were also being poached by private schools who would give them more money to take difficult-to-fill positions.

He knew of schools that had lost key members of staff and been unable to fill the positions. The classes would then be taken by teachers who had other areas of expertise. Mr Nogher said the subjects most difficult to staff were science, English, maths and technology.

He said there were concerns about a Government target of an 85 per cent pass rate for level 2 NCEA. Schools were under pressure to meet that target and some were offering credits that might not be academically rigorous or the best fit for students, he said.

"You don't go into teaching because you want to tick a box for the Ministry of Education. You want to provide the best quality education that you can for the kids," said Mr Nogher.

In term one this year, the principals of secondary and composite schools with senior rolls were surveyed about their staffing situation. The PPTA Secondary Staff Report was based on responses from 172 secondary and composite schools. The report showed advertised jobs were increasing and the mean number of applicants per position was declining. The proportion leaving to go to other jobs outside teaching had also increased.

Those leaving for "other reasons", such as retirement, accounted for the largest proportion of leavers. Principals expressed reservations about the impacts of pending retirements on their schools. Teachers were also leaving the state system for private schools.

Principals frequently mention maths, te reo, sciences and technology as hard to staff subjects.

There was a jump in teachers being used outside of their specialist area because specialists could not be found, according to the report. Around one in nine schools had to cancel classes or transfer to a form of distance learning because a suitable specialist teacher could not be found, the report said.