Source: Radio New Zealand
Secondary schools need more teachers in the system than previously thought. File photo. Richard Tindiller
The Education Ministry has been underestimating the scale of the secondary teacher shortage, and says correcting its calculations caused this year’s jump in the forecast shortage.
The ministry last week forecast a likely shortfall of 1220 secondary teachers this year and next, up from last year’s projection of 880 for the same period.
The ministry’s education workforce head Anna Welanyk told RNZ the change was because the ministry previously assumed schools hired in outside teachers to cover about half of the time when their regular teachers were out of their classrooms due to factors such as non-contact time.
Welanyk said research last year showed that was true for primary schools, but not for secondary schools which used relief teachers for almost all of their teachers’ non-contact hours.
“We went out and talked to the sector to find out more information about exactly whether or not those assumptions were valid and determined that for primary, they were bang on and for secondary, they really weren’t,” she said.
She said that meant secondary schools needed more teachers in the system than previously thought.
“Because we changed the assumption to reflect what we understand to be something closer to the real life scenario, it’s meant that we’ve had to add on an additional 580-odd additional teachers into the secondary space.
“It’s not that the situation’s got dramatically worse or that our forecasting was not where it needed to be. It’s more that more detail in terms of the research that we’ve done has pointed us in a slightly different direction.”
She confirmed that it also meant the ministry had under-estimated demand for secondary teachers in previous forecasts.
Welanyk said without the change the ministry would have forecast a shortage of 140 rather than 710 secondary teachers this year.
“The situation, as described by the data in the report, is a more accurate reflection of the pressure on the system.”
In 2023, the ministry under-estimated demand for primary teachers after failing to account for changes to their collective agreement.
Meanwhile, Welanyk said there were early signs that enrolments in initial teacher education programmes had increased 30 percent his year.
“It’s very promising. It’s the highest increase that we’ve seen in quite a while, since before covid. So what that tells us is that people are interested in teaching as a profession. They do see it as a viable career path,” she said.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand