Budget 2006: School welcomes extra teachers

A Budget promise of 455 extra primary and special school teachers is welcome news for Pakuranga Heights Primary School principal Jill Pritchard - so long as it gets her more staff.

The Government has pledged to spend $89.3 million over four years on the extra teachers, starting from the beginning of the next school year.

The policy aims to reduce class sizes from just over 20 to 15.

That was good news for Pakuranga Heights, which has a teacher-pupil ratio of 1:23 in the junior school, and 1:27 in the senior classes.

The 439-pupil, decile-seven school employs 20 full-time teachers, but could use three more, one each for years one, two and three.

Ms Pritchard said a teacher student ratio of 1:15 would be "fantastic".

Many new entrants started school with little or no preschool education, and often little ability to speak English. Still others had special needs, which put more pressure on teachers.

"The fewer number of children in that area any teacher is dealing with, the better she can address those needs."

However, she was concerned that though 455 new teachers sounded like a lot, it was not many when spread around the country.

Pakuranga Heights has a special needs facility, and the extra funding would be helpful as mainstream schools currently get no targeted special funding allocation.

"We have just got to crimp it together ... with teacher aides, and things like that."

One extra teacher for each of the first three years' groups would allow teachers to "hammer in" the crucial literacy and numeracy rules, Ms Pritchard said.

"If they don't have that by the end of year three, you are struggling to move in to more sophisticated programmes."

Education Minister Steve Maharey said the move was separate to last year's election promise, at a cost of $80 million a year, of an extra 1300 teachers for new-entrant classes by 2008, though the target ratio of 1:15 was the same.

"This is just part of the general policy to lift the number of teachers above role requirements, and keep pressure on reducing class numbers."

He said details of the new-entrant scheme, to be implemented in 2008, would be consolidated during the year.

He said most concerns about the number of students per teacher still centred on secondary schools.

"The situation at primary schools is pretty settled."

He also announced an extra $95.6 million in operational funding for schools, to cover the costs of items ranging from non-teaching staff salaries, to boiler and school lawnmower repairs.