The education system is at "crisis point" as teachers are forced to take on social worker duties on top of their regular workload, a Bay of Plenty teacher says.
More than 650 Bay teachers met at a New Zealand Education Institute paid union meeting last month to examine issues in recruiting and retaining teachers, the lack of time to teach and inadequate resourcing for children with additional learning needs.
Fairhaven School teacher Trish Hunt, facilitator of the event, said a major issue was that teachers had to take on the role of social workers to cater to children's needs and there was "chronic underfunding" for this additional support.
Hunt said classroom teachers and management teams were forced to "do the best with what they have" but this added pressure on students and teachers.
"This not only affects the teacher's ability to manage their workload and sanity but also sees the wider class not given their fair share of teacher time," she said.
"It is not our teachers, schools or our children that are broken and need fixing, it is the Government's failure of duty of care in providing adequate resourcing and funding that has brought our education system to the crisis point that is today."
However, she said the current Government was ready to take on board the issues that were affecting children and New Zealand Education Institute members would use upcoming collective agreement negotiations to address the concerns.
All teachers voted unanimously to support the action for change, which included a proposed 16 per cent pay increase before 2020.
New Zealand Education Institute Te Riu Roa president Lynda Stuart said teachers were fleeing education and students did not see teaching as a desirable career choice.
She said there was a 40 per cent reduction in people enrolling in teacher training in the past six years.
"The solutions are not cheap, but tackling these issues head-on is the only way to stop this crisis in teacher numbers turning into an unmitigated disaster for our children's future education," Stuart said.
Ministry of Education deputy secretary of early learning and student achievement Ellen MacGregor-Reid said the majority of schools in New Zealand had a full teaching complement, however, supply had been "tightening" in some areas, such as Auckland, and in some subjects such as the sciences, technology, maths and Te Reo Māori.
MacGregor-Reid said to assist schools struggling to fill positions, the minister announced a $9.5 million teacher supply package late last year, designed to support more graduates into permanent teaching positions, support experienced teachers back into the profession and recruit new graduates into teaching.
MacGregor-Reid said the ministry provided support to about 80,000 to 100,000 children and young people who required some form of additional targeted or specialist learning support each year.
The Minister of Education announced a three-year work programme for education that included developing an action plan for the learning support system that ensured resources were allocated based on an individual needs assessment for each child.
University of Waikato dean of education Professor Don Klinger said there had been an increase in people enrolling in teacher education after a decrease in 2011.
"Enrolments are slowing coming back up," he said.
Klinger saw "huge potential" for Tauranga teacher education enrolments as the new campus was scheduled to be completed in 2019 and the city' was growing.
A meeting will be held on June 20 at ASB Arena to report back from negotiations and discuss the next steps.