How come the Education Ministry employs 1704 more staff than seven years ago?

Sunday, 26 November 2023

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has hogged the spotlight when it comes to burgeoning public service numbers, but the Ministry of Education has also seen a surge in its staffing.

The number of teachers employed by state schools rose modestly, by just over 5% from 69,143 in 2017 to 72,950 in 2022, roughly matching the growth in the country’s school-aged population.

But over the same period the number of full-time equivalents (FTEs) employed at the Ministry of Education ballooned by 55% to top 4000.

By June this year the ministry employed 4311 staff, 1704 more than it did in June 2016.

Post-Primary Teachers Association acting president Chris Abercrombie notes the ministry and schools will be competing in the same talent pool for many of their staff.

“A lot of the additional advisers hired by the Ministry of Education over the past six years would be former teachers, and this has no doubt contributed to the current shortage of secondary teachers,” he says.

The increase in staff numbers at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) since 2016 has been more dramatic, with its workforce almost doubling to top 6400 since then.

MBIE has attributed the growth in its workforce in part to a plethora of new responsibilities the super-ministry has absorbed over that time, and a need to employ more immigration officers to handle rising migration.

So what is the Ministry of Education’s explanation for its increase?

First up, deputy secretary Aditi Cook says it has employed 360 extra staff to plan and oversee a big rise in investment in school infrastructure.

The country’s 16,000 school buildings have a book value of about $30 billion, making that “the second-largest social property portfolio in New Zealand”, she says.

That is after Kāinga Ora, whose state-housing assets are valued at about $44b.

In the 2017 financial year, the Government was investing an annual sum of about $750m in those properties, but the investment increased to more than $1.5b in 2022.

That has translated into a need for more delivery managers, construction observers, property advisers and asset planners, Cook says.

Scotty Evans, the ministry’s deputy secretary in charge of physical and digital infrastructure, says that since 2017 the ministry has overseen the construction of 2200 classrooms and completed rebuilding 89 schools damaged in the Christchurch earthquakes.

A sign of the times is that the ministry has had to take on about another 80 extra staff to support growing demand from schools for digital infrastructure and to help them manage the challenges surrounding cyber-security.

Cook says it has recruited an additional 200 staff to manage enrolment tasks that were previously the responsibility of school boards, to manage pay equity claims and support schools’ payroll, and to deliver the Ka Ora, Ka Ako Healthy School Lunches programme.

The latter scheme is providing free lunches to children in more than 800 schools.

But the biggest single explanation for the increase in the ministry’s workforce is that, since 2017, it has taken on 550 extra education advisers and an additional 170 curriculum advisers and related staff.

The former work out of the ministry’s regional offices, providing advice and front-line support to schools, including in early learning, while the latter have been involved in implementing recommendations of the Tomorrow’s Schools task force.

Together, all those new hires account for about 80% of ministry’s overall increase in staff.

The education advisers and curriculum leaders do appear to be valued by schools.

Abercrombie says the changes to the national curriculum were significant and substantial “so additional staff have been necessary to do this work”.

“We would love to see education stop being treated as a political football. There needs to be more general agreement from all parties on education policies that will remain in place throughout a child and young person’s years of schooling, rather than having things chop and change.”

New Zealand Educational Institute president Mark Potter has called for additional teachers to reduce classroom ratios, but says that should not be at the expense of fewer Education Ministry support workers.

“We need more of these resources as well as improved staffing and better student-teacher ratios in schools and centres themselves if we are to do even as well as other OECD countries to support kaiako (teachers) and tamariki to succeed,” he says.

“A reduction in front-line staff that support our members would slow down their work and add more load, which is not what we want if we’re to improve our education system.”

Principals’ Federation national president Leanne Otene says “anything to do with learning support” has to continue.

“We're talking about psychologists and counsellors that are coming from the ministry. Absolutely we need more, sorry, not less.

“Schools are dealing with behaviours and issues that weren't there 10 years ago. We've been through Covid and had traumatic events through natural disasters.”

Otene is more equivocal about the benefit provided by the extra 170 curriculum leaders, saying they have yet to reach their full potential but that there is a role they should fill.

They have been purely focused on ensuring schools are supported through the curriculum refresh, but the bigger need is for the return of subject-matter experts schools used to be able draw on before the arrival of National Standards in 2010, she says.

“We want them in schools, working alongside staff and principals to make a difference for our kids. What we don't want to see them doing is sitting in offices.

“There are a lot of them, it’s true. But if we were to look at how many teachers and principals we've got in New Zealand, it's not very many at all.”

The Education Ministry put plans to recruit a further 159 non-frontline staff on hold after the Labour government ordered it to make savings of almost $70m in August in the run-up to the election, which might suggest those hires were to some extent discretionary.

But a spokesperson says the pause on hiring is putting pressure on the organisation. “The 159 positions are all established roles across the ministry. We’re currently reviewing how we can respond to that.”

The broader opportunities for the new government to significantly reduce costs in the wider education sector would appear limited given the lion’s share of the overall education budget goes on paying teachers.

Deferring the maintenance of school buildings and reducing the number of employees looking after them might be the most obvious way of cutting spending in the short term.

That is given the Labour government expected to spend most of the remainder of the education budget – $4.8b in the current financial year – on capital expenditure and property operating costs.

In comparison, the sum budgeted for the ministry’s operations itself is $966m.

But curbing infrastructure spending might be kicking a can down the road, especially if record immigration increases the pressure on school infrastructure.

Evans says the average school building is between 50 and 60 years old.

“New Zealand infrastructure in general is ageing and we're having to respond to that.

“If there's an ‘affordability challenge’, then obviously we would be working with the incoming government around how we best prioritise that work.”

But he says that with capital works and maintenance, “you just can't turn the tap off in some cases”.

Meanwhile, there are always going to be worthy calls for more staff and more spending.

Otene says the Principals’ Federation is well aware public services have been put on notice over spending and that the Ministry of Education has to tighten its belt.

But she is particularly keen to see the new team of 16 principal leadership advisers that the ministry brought on board at the start of the year not only survive any squeeze, but expand – even if that is at the expense of shedding some ministry experts.

The leadership advisers are principals who are seconded for a year to provide advice to working principals on “everything”, including schools’ operations, strategic planning and access to professional development, she says.

“Those principal leadership advisers are ‘gold’”, but the ministry needs a team of about 25 to ensure fair access to the support, she says.

“At the moment, what we need is more in Auckland and in our rural areas.”