Immigration and Education Minister Erica Stanford wants to see more overseas secondary school teachers come to New Zealand to help with current shortages. Photo / Hagen Hopkins
Immigration and Education Minister Erica Stanford wants to see more overseas secondary school teachers come to New Zealand to help with current shortages. Photo / Hagen Hopkins
The Government will allow overseas secondary school teachers to become New Zealand residents more quickly in the hope it will address the current workforce shortage which has been described as worse than ever.
Immigration and Education Minister Erica Stanford today confirmed secondary teachers would be shifted from the Green ListWork to Residence pathway to the Straight to Residence pathway, meaning eligible overseas teachers would be able to apply for residence from offshore instead of needing to work in New Zealand first.
The change would come into force from May. Applicants would still need to be registered and hold a current practising certificate through the Teaching Council.
According to Stanford’s office, there was a deficit of 227 secondary teachers in New Zealand currently. That had been expected to increase to 546 next year and 679 in 2026 if immigration settings hadn’t changed.
Through the Work to Residence pathway, 541 teachers had been brought in in the past two years. When nurses were added to the Straight to Residence pathway in 2022, about 2000 applications were made and similar boosts from teachers were expected come May.
“Shortages in secondary teachers, especially those in specific regions and subject skills such as science, technology, and mathematics, have been an ongoing challenge for the New Zealand education workforce.
“Addressing projections of continued shortages of secondary teachers in the short-to-medium term are a key concern for this Government.”
Towards the end of the last school year, secondary school principals warned they were struggling to find enough good teachers to staff their classrooms this year amid a surge of teenagers arriving from overseas and falling teacher trainee numbers.
Northcote College principal Vicki Barrie told RNZ the situation was definitely worse than ever and more work was needed to encourage young people finishing their degrees to study to become secondary teachers.
“We’re asking people who have got lots of other multiple, positive options to consider another year as a student, another fulltime year training to be a teacher and then some pretty modest salaries once you are trained,” Barrie said.
“We have to offer graduates something more attractive. Something like no fees for your year of teacher training, maybe income for the year of teacher training and then maybe something like ‘stay for two years and we’ll write off your student loan’.”
The same change won't be made for primary school teachers. Photo / 123rf
Stanford said all other teachers would remain on the Work to Residence pathway as it was expected New Zealand had enough primary school teachers.
Asked for evidence to support this, Stanford’s office pointed to a teacher demand and supply projection assessment by the Ministry of Education in December last year.
It found the demand for primary school teachers was projected to decrease in the next decade from 36,416 teachers to 35,242, a trend driven by the expected decline in primary student numbers thanks to slowing birth rates and students transitioning into secondary schooling.
In Northland, Pat Newman from the Tai Tokerau Principals’ Association said job advertisements sometimes attracted no applications and schools had unfilled vacancies.
“In many cases you’re lucky to get one application. And that’s because we’ve stripped all the incentives off going out to work in isolated areas.”
Auckland Primary Principals’ Association president Kyle Brewerton said hundreds of teachers had left the region and there were not enough new teachers to replace them.
Adam Pearse is a political reporter in the NZ Herald Press Gallery team, based at Parliament. He has worked for NZME since 2018, covering sport and health for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei before moving to the NZ Herald in Auckland, covering Covid-19 and crime.
