Ministry’s Teacher Supply Model Over Optimistic – PPTA

Projections of secondary teacher supply, released by the Ministry of Education today, seem over optimistic and the extent of the secondary teacher shortage over the next three years will most likely be worse as

pay and working conditions continue to deteriorate, says Melanie Webber, President of PPTA Te Wehengarua.

“While there is nothing wrong mathematically with the model, we think some of the assumptions that it is based on are not realistic.

“The results of our teacher supply survey, carried out back in May, painted a pretty dire picture, and we have every reason to believe the situation has deteriorated since then.”

The survey found that:

• Almost a third of the schools that responded to the survey had teachers working in areas in which they were not specialised, predominantly Te Reo Māori, Maths and Technology, because specialists could not be found.
• More than a quarter of the schools that responded were forced to cancel or transfer classes to Te Kura (Correspondence School), polytechnics or online because specialist teachers could not be found.
• In the first five months of this year, appointments were being made by schools despite there being no suitable applicants.
• The number of day relievers per school was the lowest recorded in almost 25 years.

“The loss of just one teacher who cannot be replaced has an adverse impact on about 130 students who don’t have a specialist subject teacher. Every young person in Aotearoa New Zealand has the right to a quality education, which means a specialist subject teacher for all of their subjects.

“The Government seems to be relying on overseas teachers to fill the ever increasing gap. However, the shortage is global and poaching teachers from other countries is not a solution. We need to be able to rely on a home-grown secondary teaching workforce, including the thousands of highly experienced ex teachers in our backyard who would return to teaching tomorrow if the pay and conditions were right. Unfortunately, the government is continuing to ignore those fundamentals.

“It is because recruiting and retention for our secondary schools is so broken and we can no longer stretch to fill the gaps that secondary teachers feel forced to take industrial action next term.”

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