Schools across the country are grappling with a lack of staff.
Schools across the country are grappling with a lack of staff.
Editorial
EDITORIAL
As the school year draws to a close and another one is set to get under way, there are schools across New Zealand that do not have enough teachers to function properly and will be scrambling to fill rosters in January.
Principals told RNZ lastweek they needed more staff than ever due to the arrival of nearly 40,000 children of foreign workers over the past two financial years and, for primary schools, increases in classroom release time for teachers next year.
These principals also said that, while they are getting more applications from teachers trained overseas, what they really want is to find locally trained graduates.
“It used to be very unusual for schools [in] week seven, week eight of Term 4 not to have their staffing sorted but now it’s becoming just an everyday occurrence,” Southland Principals’ Association president Simon Bell told RNZ.
According to Bell, schools also have to find more teachers to cover increases in classroom release time next year, and to release their staff for government-funded teacher training in literacy and numeracy.
Principals’ Federation president Leanne Otene confirmed that schools in other regions were also struggling with recruitment for 2025.
“What I’m being told by principals is that the number of applicants is substantially less than in any previous year,” Otene said.
Principals' Federation president Leanne Otene. Photo / Michael Cunningham
“It’s been dwindling for some time because we’re not training as many teachers anymore and we don’t have as many graduates as we have had in the past,” she added.
“There is concern out there. We won’t really know whether or not we’ve got teachers in front of classes until probably around about January. There’ll be scrambling in January no doubt to fill those last positions.”
Secondary Principals’ Association president Vaughan Couillault said secondary schools were also affected.
“I’m on a campus where I’ve got to add a dozen teachers to my roster, so not replacing, actually adding. We have had significant applications but the vast majority of those are from offshore, haven’t had any experience teaching in a New Zealand secondary school and finding quality is continuing to be a real challenge.”
Spanz president Vaughan Couillault is also principal of Auckland's Papatoetoe High School. Photo / Dean Purcell
Couillault said immigration had a big effect on enrolments. “I will have gone up 600 students in two years,” he said.
The problem is widespread, and has been building for some time. In September, parents of students studying at Ōrewa College were warned that their children could be rostered to study from home as the school grapples with a staff shortage.
At the time, New Zealand Post-Primary Teachers’ Association Te Wehengarua (PPTA) president Chris Abercrombie said Ōrewa College was not alone in its plan to roster students home.
“Increasing numbers of secondary schools around the motu are being forced to do this because of a shortage of teachers,” Abercrombie said.
“The shortage of relief teachers is the canary in the mine, signalling there is an underlying and worsening shortage of permanent teachers in our system. Increasing numbers of relievers are being employed in permanent positions.
“Successive governments have been told about this emerging crisis for many years but have failed to take the necessary steps to resolve the issue.”
He said New Zealand needed its own supply of trained and qualified teachers and there was no point in trying to stem the shortage with overseas teachers.
“The heartbreaking fact of the matter is that here, in Aotearoa New Zealand, there are thousands of former teachers who would return to the classroom tomorrow if the salary and conditions were right – they love teaching and just want to be paid well and have a work/life balance,” Abercrombie added.
For Dr Nina Hood, founder of The Education Hub, changes the Government had proposed to the teaching curriculum hadn’t helped matters.
“I was speaking to a secondary school principal last week, and she was talking about the impact that the changes to Level 1 NCEA are having on her teachers, and she spoke of teachers being on their knees and she’d had highly experienced teachers, teachers with at least 20 years of experience in tears,” she told the podcast in September.
The Government’s May Budget included $53 million extra for teacher education and recruitment. The Ministry of Education has acknowledged these staffing pressures affecting schools and some short-term solutions have been put forward, including a plan to plug the national teacher shortage with unregistered relievers.
We’re plugging holes but not fixing the leak.
The Government needs to look at the root causes of these shortages and address the causes with a proper plan to ensure schools don’t have to get creative about rosters and scramble to fill in teaching positions.
While there are schools operating without adequate staff numbers, we should perhaps worry less about truancy and more about ensuring our children have access to highly qualified teaching staff and our schools are properly resourced for the number of children we want to see in them.
