If we want talented people from industry to teach we would have to pay a fair market rate to recruit them, writes teacher Peter Wills. Photo / Supplied
If we want talented people from industry to teach we would have to pay a fair market rate to recruit them, writes teacher Peter Wills. Photo / Supplied
THREE FACTS:
Thousands of senior secondary school students have been impacted by the teachers’ strike this week.
The Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) said teachers wanted pay and conditions that would attract and keep staff, and were striking over stalled negotiations.
The union voted last week to reject the Government’s latest offer and begin partial strikes.
On Thursday morning, the first question my Year 10 maths students asked me was “Have you seen the video of Charlie Kirk getting shot in the neck, Sir?” These students, just 14-15 years old, started talking about the video of the assassination. Almost all of them had seenit. Most of those who had seen the graphic images of Charlie Kirk’s death had these videos algorithmically served to them before they had breakfast.
I settled the class and let them know it is okay to feel uncomfortable seeing something so violent. Then we started to learn some algebra. At morning tea in the staffroom it turned out that all of us were having these conversations with our students.
As a teacher I worry about the world our students will enter. A world that seems increasingly violent, polarised and overwhelming. A world where our children are surrounded by AI, social media and algorithms. I’m worried about our children. I think it’s completely fair that parents are worried too.
Gone are the days where the teacher would transmit knowledge from the front and the students would passively listen. Chalk and talk doesn’t fly any more. In the 21st century, a teacher’s job is to support students to be adaptable for an uncertain future. Teachers today need to be empathetic, digitally literate subject experts and role models to the young people in our care. Parents want their kids to be resilient, to have teamwork skills and to be able to communicate well with others. Employers want this too. So do teachers.
The Coalition Government has recognised this changing world and recently introduced the largest change package the New Zealand education system has seen in 20 years. A new curriculum, a new NCEA system, and a new set of senior subjects designed to prepare students for this changing world. Subjects like statistics and data science, future mathematics and infrastructure engineering. Parents want schools of today to prepare kids for the future. These new proposals may, if they’re implemented well, help us deliver the world-class education our children deserve.
The problem is we don’t have enough qualified teachers.
According to the 2025 School Staffing Survey Report, half of all principals can’t find the staff they need. A third of classes are taught by teachers who aren’t trained in the subject, and many schools have cancelled classes because they can’t find the teachers. Half of new teachers quit within the first five years. The major reasons teachers give for this are workload, pay and support in that order.
The teachers who remain are getting older. Thirty percent of teachers are over the age of 55 and 10% are over the age of 65. These teachers are often very experienced and have huge institutional knowledge. What will we do when they retire?
Maybe we could recruit? If we want talented people from industry to teach we would have to pay a fair market rate to recruit them. One of the newly proposed subjects is statistics and data science. Right now, the going salary for a data science position on Seek is $90,000-$110,000. For a senior data science position, it’s $200,000-$250,000. A beginning teacher today will earn $61,329. Teachers on the top of the pay scale earn $103,086.
If your local supermarket can’t keep butchers and bakers, they raise wages to compete with the supermarket up the road. For us, “up the road” isn’t another shop. It’s Australia and the private sector. The starting salary for secondary school teachers in Western Australia is around NZ$95,000.
There are some misconceptions about teacher’s pay in New Zealand. A teacher with 10 year’ experience earns $103,086, the top step of the secondary school teacher’s salary scale. The average teacher earns $100,933 because about two-thirds of teachers are already at the top of the scale. They can’t earn any more unless they take on a management role.
Judith Collins said: “None of this takes away that these are still good salaries with 12 weeks’ annual leave, very generous leave provisions, and actually kids need their education”.
Parents know that teachers’ jobs don’t stop at 3pm. We spend time after school and in the holidays marking, planning, running sports teams, running cultural events and doing all the other work that makes a good school great.
Peter Wills is a sixth year maths and statistics teacher working in Hawke's Bay. Photo / Supplied
Teachers are on strike this week with students being rostered home. This isn’t about greed. Teachers are asking for the time to support the increasing numbers of students with additional needs in our classrooms, pay that allows us to attract and keep the best teachers, and the resourcing schools need to build students’ resilience so they are ready for the world ahead of them.
It is fiscally responsible to invest in our children’s futures. Investing in teaching is investing in students. Investing in students is investing in New Zealand’s future. If you want a great teacher in every classroom who can prepare our children for the changing world they live in, then let the people in your life know why you support the teachers strike.
