Schools start 2025 scrambling as teacher shortage hits

Tuesday, 21 January 2025

Schools across Aotearoa are gearing up to start the year without being fully staffed as a staff shortage continues. (File photo)

In the 16 years John Murdoch has been a leader in education, he can only recall once starting the year with a shortage of teachers.

He fears this year might be the second.

As schools gear up to return to classrooms, a nationwide teacher shortage has many scrambling to fill positions.

Meanwhile, Education Minister Erica Stanford says a new refreshed curriculum and resources delivered to schools last week will be key to relieving the burden on teachers.

Murdoch, principal of Heretaunga College in Upper Hutt, was still looking to fill three positions at the school at the end of last week, with all applications for head of learning English, technology teacher and Mātauranga Māori having closed on Monday.

“We're struggling to find qualified, experienced staff,” he said. “The quality of the field is not there as it has been in previous years.”

As of Monday, there were 346 full-time vacancies across the motu listed on Education Gazette.

John Murdoch, principal of Heretaunga College in Upper Hutt, fears this year will be the second time in 16 years he starts the school year without being fully staffed. (File photo)

Advertisements for 37 full-time roles at schools from primary to secondary school in Wellington included two English, three maths and four science teachers, many with start dates in term one.

Wainuiomata High School was advertising for five full-time roles including a physical education and health teacher, kaiako Wharekura (maths teacher) and English teacher.

In Canterbury, there were 34 vacancies, including four English teachers and almost a third seeking a principal or assistant principal.

Maths, technology and te reo Māori were areas with a particular shortage, Murdoch said.

The shortage put a strain on a shrinking pool of relief teachers, while a number of schools were using the Limited Authority to Teach (LAT) which enabled people without a teaching qualification to teach in positions where there was a need for specialist skills or skills in short supply.

There were some advantages to that but it also put a strain on resource to support those people too, Murdoch said.

“There's lots of different pools and they're all strained at the moment.

PPTA president, Chris Abercrombie says the teacher shortage is the key issue going into the new school year. (File photo)

“Getting people from overseas is quite a lengthy and challenging process, administratively, but also induction takes a lot of time.”

Employing overseas teachers was a short-term fix, while the ability to have unqualified teachers in classrooms, including through LAT and charter schools, was concerning, said PPTA president Chris Abercrombie.

The worsening teacher shortage was a key issue going into the new year.

“Without a workforce, none of the other changes ‒ NCEA, the curriculum changes – anything that the minister wants to do, the Government wants to do, can happen,” Abercrombie said.

With collective agreement negotiations starting this year, pay and conditions were key, Abercrombie said.

“Also increasing the mana of the profession … The sector wants consistency, the sector wants certainty, that’s how you also get people into the profession.”

Minister of Education Erica Stanford says a refreshed curriculum and extensive resources will help ease the burden on teachers. (File photo)

Stanford said teacher shortages were a global issue, acknowledging they were affecting Aotearoa too, with not enough people choosing the profession.

“We are always going to rely on overseas teachers, but we shouldn’t be relying on as much as we are at the moment, and it is on us to make sure that we’re encouraging more young people into teaching,” Stanford said.

The Government had invested in an on-site training programme for mid-life career changes which had been “massively oversubscribed and hugely popular”, and she was hoping to increase the numbers through this year’s Budget.

Part of the reason why there was a shortage was because the curriculum, support and resource “has been rubbish”, she said.

“One of the things we hear loud and clear when it when it comes to bargaining rounds, is that that they are overworked and they don't have the resources that they need, and so the last Budget was very much focused on making sure we could get these resources into classrooms and write the new curriculum and make sure that we were taking that burden off them.”

Last week, 500,000 teacher guidebooks, down to the level of a lesson plan, as well as student workbooks and textbooks were being sent out to 92% of schools around the country, she said.

“They love that level of specificity and detail that takes the pressure off them.”

Tawa College principal Andrew Savage said staffing was “a constant headache” and there was a lot of burnout with teachers having to wear multiple hats outside of their main role.

“It's not hard to find a body to put in front of students,” he said, but teachers with specialised skills were increasingly hard to come by.

“I’m really proud of the people that we have on staff and the work that they’re doing, but there are definitely people who are stretching themselves to cover specialist areas that perhaps wouldn’t have been their first choice.”

Ministry of Education hautū (leader) education workforce, Anna Welanyk, said the global shortage impacted science, technology, maths and engineering in particular.

“Teachers able to teach in te reo are also in high demand, as more students elect to learn in ‘immersion’ settings.“

The ministry had a range of teacher training incentives and its teams from Te Mahau and Leadership Advisers supported schools experiencing ongoing supply challenges.