‘Not sustainable’: Teacher aide quits over low pay and term-time only employment

Thursday, 9 July 2026

Teacher aides say a lack of security, too few hours of work, not being paid during school holidays, is creating untenable financial pressures and even causing some to quit.

A former Christchurch teacher aide is moving to Australia after realising he could no longer afford to help his school’s most vulnerable children.

Marcel Heemi said he worked 26 hours a week - the maximum the school could offer him - at a local school supporting neurodivergent and traumatised students.

As the only male teacher aide at his school, he was allocated the most physically aggressive students.

“A lot of these kids don't have father figures… they thought of me as an uncle or like a dad,” the 28-year-old said.

Teacher aides support students who need extra assistance and are “hugely important”, NZ Principal Federation president Jason Miles says.

But when the school term breaks arrived, his income stopped. Forced to choose between spreading his wages across the year or facing an empty bank account during the holidays, the financial strain became too much.

“I literally had to choose not to be annualised so I could afford to live,” the former teacher aide, who agreed to share his story on the condition of anonymity, said.

“The holidays were pretty tough. You’re saving up your money throughout the year just to spend in the holidays to get through. It was just not sustainable.”

He said despite his positive impact in the classroom and ability to de-escalate dangerous situations, the funding system treated teacher aides as disposable.

His departure to Australia next month highlights the financial pressures driving experienced teacher aides out of the profession.

In addition to receiving only term-time pay, most teacher aides struggle with a lack of hours, fixed term contracts, often renewed year by year or term by term, and hourly pay increases that have not kept up with inflation or the living wage.

Teacher aide and NZEI Te Ria Roa spokesperson Ally Kingi said just 6% of teacher aides work 40 hours a week and many simply run out of money during the school holidays, whether they have chosen to annualise their pay or not.

Teacher aide Jane Salesa says she loves her job but the pay doesn’t reflect the skills and commitment it requires.

“A lot of them grin and bear it because they’re embarrassed and they don't want to ask for help,” Kingi said.

She said some apply for temporary accommodation supplements from MSD or rely on family just to survive the term breaks.

Invercargill teacher aide Jane Salesa earns about $28.60 an hour and works 15 hours a week supporting young learners who need extra help with a structured literacy programme. She wanted more hours but they were not available.

She says she has learned a lot about literacy through supporting her own children, two of whom are neurodivergent and one deaf, but had not received any professional development for her role.

For each 45-minute class, Salesa is given a timetable for numerous phonics activities she must get through with about six students.

To ensure she is following the programme correctly she videos the classroom teacher and builds her own curriculum resource kits.

Teacher aides are supporting schools to roll out structured literacy programmes, despite not receiving any professional development.

A recent health scare and hospital stay for her husband, who works fulltime, made her realise she needed to increase her hours of work, or take up a more secure role in a factory or shop.

She applied for a 30-hour-a-week teacher aide role at a different school, and is to start in term 3.

“The financial struggle is the cost of living going up, the power’s gone up, the food’s gone up,” Salesa said.

“My rent is $640. If I'm only getting $300 a week, I'm not going to have a roof over my head.”

New Zealand Principals Federation president Jason Miles said teacher aides are “hugely important” but the funding system means schools cannot employ them on better terms.

To cope, Salesa's whānau relies on food swaps and bartering venison hunted by her son for basic vegetables.

New Zealand Principals’ Federation president Jason Miles said schools relied on funding streams tied to individual high needs students, often for a specific time period. After that, they had to draw on their operational grants, donations and fundraising.

Budget 2025 included additional funding over four years for learning support but Miles said the uplift wasn’t being felt by schools.

“If you talk to almost all principals across New Zealand, that funding doesn’t go anywhere near the rate of support that’s needed in our schools.”

The Ministry of Education maintains the employment terms negotiated for teacher aides are fair.

Deputy secretary Anna Welanyk said because teacher aides support students during term times, “they are not usually required to work during the school holidays”.

Welanyk said the ministry considered claims regarding greater job security for teacher aides during collective bargaining with NZEI Te Riu Roa, which concluded in March, but they were not included in the final settlement.