Job insecurity and a lack of consistent hours are putting financial pressure on teacher aides, forcing some to take on second jobs to stay afloat.
A new survey by the New Zealand Education Institute (NZEI) found 53% of teacher aides and school support staff feel insecure in their jobs.
More than half of all teacher aides in New Zealand are on fixed-term contracts and only 10% of them work full-time.
This was negatively impacting their mental health, creating financial distress and stunting career progression, the union survey found.
But the Ministry of Education said the Government is delivering “the most significant investment in learning support in a generation”, with more than 2 million extra teacher aide hours to be funded from 2028.
Teacher aides are part of the wider school support staff workforce, which also includes librarians, administrators and sports coordinators.
Their work can vary in responsibilities, with some focused on helping particular students with learning difficulties or higher needs, while others provided schools with cultural or language support.
Bincy, who only wanted her first name used, is a teacher aide who works a second job at a supermarket because she doesn’t get enough hours at her main job.
Her school gave her 16 hours of work per week last year and bumped it up to 20 hours per week this year, she said.
It was still not enough for Bincy, a mum, to pay the bills, so she works another 16 hours per week at a supermarket.
While the two gigs are difficult to juggle, she said she felt lucky to have found a second job because not all of her colleagues could say the same.
She previously worked as a mathematics and English teacher in India for 15 years, teaching classes of about 50 students at a time.
She started working as a teacher aide after moving to New Zealand and said concentrating on helping a few “slow learners” in classes was “fulfilling”.
“I’m happy doing teacher aide-ing,” she said.
“We don’t have this teacher aide system in India.”
Bincy hoped the hours at her school job would keep increasing so she could focus more on work she was passionate about.
She said it ultimately depended on what funding the Ministry of Education gave schools.
“We’re a part of the whānau at school, we’re not a nice-to-have,” teacher aide Ally Kingi said.
Kingi has been in the profession for 18 years and also served as the support staff representative on the NZEI executive.
She said there were many issues with the way teacher aides and other support staff were funded and the hours they got.
Teacher aides are funded through schools’ operation grants, which also pay for a wide range of necessities like electricity and toilet paper, she said.
“There is no teacher aide allowance.”
As part of last year’s Budget, the Government announced it would fund more than 2 million additional teacher aide hours every year from 2028, Ministry of Education workforce leader Anna Welanyk said.
“This commitment responds to the growing number of children with additional learning needs and the increasing pressure on teachers and schools.”
Budget 2025 also included an expansion of the Early Intervention Service, which provides support for young children with high needs, and funding to provide every primary school with a learning support coordinator.
Kingi said the end of the year was an especially stressful time because that was when many teacher aides either discovered their work hours had been cut down for the following year, or that they were being let go.
That meant many teacher aides were forced to find second jobs to make ends meet, or leave the profession altogether, she said.
NZEI has been in bargaining for better pay and work conditions for school support staff for 16 months.
The most recent offer from Government was for a 4.35% pay increase that would take 12 months to fully come into effect.
Kingi said they had received five offers in total but none had been accepted.
In October last year, school support staff went on strike for the first time in New Zealand history, as part of a historic ‘mega strike’ that also included doctors, nurses and prison staff.
“Our children deserve to have people walking alongside them, supporting them, helping them to shine, helping them to be seen for what they can do and not what they can’t do,” Kingi said.
“They deserve to have people doing that who are properly employed and properly paid.”
Negotiations for the school support staff collective agreements are scheduled to resume on March 11.
Janhavi Gosavi is a Wellington-based journalist for the New Zealand Herald who covers news in the capital.