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Schools are being hit by a wave of winter illnesses early, leaving some principals concerned about relief teacher shortages.
May Road School principal Lynda Stuart said staff are already seeing an increase in Covid cases in schools.
“This bout seems to be hitting as hard, if not harder than last year, ill health seems to be hitting schools earlier than it would normally in the year.
“In our school there are a number of children away with flu like symptoms or Covid and I have just thanked parents in the newsletter for keeping children at home when they are genuinely sick.”
“My principal colleagues and I are having to grapple with split classes, and teachers forgoing classroom release time or forgoing specialist programmes where a reliever is not available.
May Rd School Principal Lynda Stuart. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
“This is also impacting on support staff availability and the stretch of covering where additional support is needed for children.”
Stuart said increased financial investment in schools and efforts to increase the relief teacher pool would make the biggest difference.
“I am also concerned that our budget may not be able to sustain the staffing costs.
“In the past we have been able to claim the financial costs associated with this back from the Ministry of Education.”
She said this support is not available currently but it would be beneficial.
“This needs an urgent system response if schools are to be able to guarantee equitable access to quality learning to all tamariki.”
Ministry of Education (MoE) Workforce leader Jolanda Meijer said illness will be impacting school staffing, including the demand for relievers.
“There has been more demand for day relievers since the pandemic.”
The number of day relief teachers available nationwide each year grew in 2023, Meijer said.
In 2021 there were 8458 relief teachers nationwide and MoE said in 2023 this increased to 9548 teachers.
There were 12272 relief teachers nationwide in 2011, the peak in the past 20 years, according to Education Counts/MoE data.
As schools are governed by school boards, the ministry does not have access to data that shows why teachers are off sick, Meijer said.
Meijer said the ministry has progressively installed Internal Environment Monitoring (IEM) devices in schools, which also help schools understand ventilation requirements.
“This response included the distribution of close to 13,000 CO2 monitors and 14,000 portable air cleaners, and these items were given to schools for ongoing use.”
Quite a jump in Covid hospitalisations to 242 from 152 last week. Plus flu season is just beginning. Reminder you can book Covid & flu vaccines at https://t.co/rZxjgPfv48 Covid booster free for all over 30s Flu jab available for all over 6 mo, free for 65+ & other risk groups
That included a jump in hospital admissions last week – from 152 cases in the previous week to 242 – along with a near doubling in reported cases, from 3922 to 6146.
“We’re in a cycle now where, when we get a wave, a significant number of people will get infected and develop some immunity, but over time, that population-level immunity decreases due to waning and the arrival of new variants,” Plank said.
“Eventually, we reach a point where that immunity level has dropped low enough that the virus can start to increase - and the cycle begins again.”
