Chris Abercrombie: PPTA President voices concerns about teacher shortage ahead of 2025 school year

As kids get ready to head back to school, educators are worried about a lack of teachers - with a shortage of about 346 full time teachers sparking concerns.

The PPTA's Chris Abercrombie says New Zealand is competing with the rest of the world for staff. 

He says New Zealand needs to be an attractive place for domestic teachers to stay, and for overseas teachers to move to. 

"The Government could be looking at increasing pay and conditions at their upcoming collective agreement - we know that pay helps keep people in the profession."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Students are gearing up to return to the classroom. Schools
of course, as always lately scrambling to find enough teachers
to fill vacant positions. So the question is how many
are we short of? Three hundred and forty six apparently
full time vacancies and apparently the shortage could get worse
as the year goes on. So p PTA president Chris
amber Crumbie joins in, Now, Hello, Chris, how are you?

(00:21):
I thought pay was good? Why are we having such
a shortage these days?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Well, it's an international issue. We know that other jurisdictions
are really struggling to get teachers. You know, New Zealand
teachers are incredibly attractive to overseas jurisdictions. Is heavy, heavy
advertising campaigns to get New Zealanders to go to Australia,
to the UK, to the Canada and so yeah, it's
getting more and more difficult to have teachers in the clasroom.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
What are we short of? What subjects?

Speaker 2 (00:47):
So Aaron and Salmon at across the board is the
what sort of has become Unfortunately the traditional hard to
staff sort of masks the technology areas. Tolomley has been
incredibly hard to staff, but across the board, you know,
I know have schools, particularly the end of the year,
we'll find out hard to get pe teachers, teachers and
these things that have never really occurred in the past.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Well, what happens when they can't find a teacher.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
So there's a few options available, So one of them
is canceled the class, canceled the subject. They could bring
in a short term reliever if they can find one again.
You know, it might not be a subject specialist in
that area, but they might about to find someone who
can take the class. There's a few options available, none
of them are as good as having a full time teacher,
proper teacher in the clasroom.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Will they look overseas.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yes, So overseas recruitment has become really key. Our situation
will be a lot worse if it's not. If it
wasn't for our overseas recruitment. But you have to, as
I said, we're competing in an international market. So you know,
Australian teachers are in more than New Zealand teachers, you know,
so we're losing teachers over there. We tend to recruit
from the Pacific, from the Philippines, from India, where we

(01:53):
have better terms and conditions than those countries, so it
becomes a bit of a missure cycle.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Anything the government can do to help.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
So you know, absolutely we can. So government could be
looking at increasing our paying conditions and are upcoming cletive agreement.
We know that pay helps keep people in the profession.
We know that we if we want to increase our
literacy and numeracy rates, which we all want, and we
need specialist support and secondary and we need to keep
those specialist English maths teachers, specialist literacy and numeracy teachers

(02:24):
in the in the classroom in schools, and so we
really want to be looking at that as we go
into negotiations this year.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
And of course you guarantee the kids' education.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Well, absolutely we want we needed every young person's country maximize,
every child maximized to their full potential if we want
to deal with the issues we're facing as a nation.
And so we want to make sure we've got the best,
highly tran highly qualified person in front of those young people.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Chris good Luck. Chris is the POPTA president.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
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