Teacher aide works 40 hours a week but still struggles to pay bills

Saturday, 30 August 2025

Holly van der Kley is a teacher aide at Rolleston College. Educators are currently in negotiations for better pay and conditions.

Holly van der Kley has been bitten and punched so hard she got a concussion in her role as a teacher aide at special education schools, but it was the lack of financial security that caused her to quit for a period in 2017.

“I just couldn’t pay my bills.”

Van der Kley was one of more than 1600 teachers, principals, and school support workers to attend two NZEI Te Riu Roa meetings at the Christchurch Town Hall this week to discuss next steps in their negotiations for better pay and conditions.

NZEI Te Ria Roa members from Canterbury packed the Christchurch Town Hall this week and a majority indicated they would support industrial action to progress negotiations for better pay and conditions.

The union has organised a series of paid union meetings for different groups it represents from August 18 to 29, who are all in negotiations with the Ministry of Education for new collective agreements.

Teacher aides are one professional group in a school support collective agreement that includes executive managers, librarians, library assistants, administration support staff, and science technicians.

The group of 37,000 workers has been negotiating with the ministry since October and rejected an offer on May 16 of a $1 increase to hourly rates over three years (60 cents in year 1, 15c in year 2, and 25c in year 3).

But van der Kley said the most important issue was to prevent the use of fixed-term contracts and to mandate permanent contracts.

After a few years selling new homes and earning much more, Van der Kley returned to teacher aiding in 2020, and in 2023 took up a lead teacher aide role at Rolleston College, which includes supervising six teacher aides.

“I missed working with the kids - it’s what I love doing, it’s what I do best.”

While she had not been physically harmed since then, she said working with students facing complex circumstances and learning difficulties came with “outbursts of behaviour”.

Van der Kley has been a teacher aide for 15 years but stepped away from the role for a few years due to the low pay.

“It takes a special person to do it, you have to be resilient, and understand it’s not their fault.”

She said pay for teacher aides came from a school’s operational grant, rather than Ministry of Education designated funding, such as that for teaching staff.

“So we're competing in schools with the toilet paper and the coffee and everything else.”

This was also why schools could only afford to employ teacher aides for limited hours, and for fixed-term yearly contracts, excluding holidays, despite a desperate need for more teacher aide support, van der Kley said.

Now working 40 hours a week during term time she considers herself lucky compared to most other teacher aides, who get only 16 hours a week, on average.

While her hourly income has increased from $13.25 in 2013 when she started - thanks in part to a settled pay equity claim - van der Kley still struggles financially despite being within the highest pay grade available. The grade has a top hourly rate of $38.77, but van der Kley said she did not earn that much (she declined to specify her exact rate).

Like most teacher aides, she has opted to annualise her pay to cover all the school holidays she is not paid for, which means the take home amount only just covers her bills.

Raewyn Himona, deputy principal and teacher at Haeata Community Campus in Aranui, says teachers are ready to take a stand to protect the profession and stop the flow of those leaving.

“With the cost of living, it’s really tight. When I get paid, my pay is gone by the end of the day, just keeping up with bills.”

The ministry’s May 16 offer included asking the Principals’ Association to “encourage schools to consider a review of employment arrangements to ensure any fixed-term agreements are for genuine reasons based on reasonable grounds”.

Van der Kley said this was a “cop out” and would fail to change the situation for about 70% of teacher aides on fixed-term contracts.

She said the financial insecurity of fixed-term contracts meant teacher aides were constantly living with the threat of not getting a new contract or losing hours - with only six weeks notice required by schools for either.

Other parts of the ministry’s offer included lump sum payments of $300 for full-time staff, $250 for part-time staff in years 2 and 3 of the collective agreement and a $9 million professional learning and development fund over three years for all staff working with neurodiverse students.

Himona teaches new entrants the basics of te reo Maori.

Van der Kley said professional development funding was extremely important to provide teacher aides with understanding about a wide range of conditions students have that affected their learning and behaviour.

“I know colleagues of mine went and did a trauma course. They came back and used that information and shared it with the rest of the team, which is so beneficial.”

Ministry of Education hautū (leader) education workforce Anna Welanyk said Budget 2025 included “the most significant investment in learning support in a generation with over two million additional teacher aide hours per year being rolled out by 2028”.

“The ministry and NZEI are continuing to negotiate in good faith.”

The fund for teacher aide professional learning and development has not been distributed yet, Welanyk said.

“We expect to be able to provide information about the fund later this year and make it available in 2026.”

Haeata Community Campus deputy principal and NZEI Te Riu Roa vice president Raewyn Himona said the attendance by teachers, principals and support staff at this week’s meeting was unprecedented.

When asked to indicate whether they supported industrial action, a majority were supportive because they have “had enough”, Himona said.

“We're losing our very good teachers who've just had enough, we're not keeping our new teachers after five years, teachers are burned out.”

The rapid pace of curriculum change, without adequate support or time to prepare was creating low morale, Himona said.

“When all of a sudden you're told at the beginning of next year, you must teach the new English curriculum - and just so that you know, we still don't actually have a copy of it.”

The years 7 to 13 English curriculum was originally expected to be implemented from term 1 next year, but the ministry announced a staggered roll-out early this month, following feedback from the sector they would not have enough time to prepare.

The final curriculum content for years 7 to 10 English, Te Reo Rangatira, and years 9 and 10 maths and statistics and Pāngarau (maths) will be available in early term 4 and will be expected to be used from term 1 next year.

For years 11 to 13, the new English curriculum will be available from term 1 for feedback and “familiarisation” but schools won’t need to teach the content until 2028 for year 11, 2029 for year 12, and 2030 for year 13.