John O'Neill: Massey University Professor of Teacher Education on the rising number of people studying to be teachers

There's a belief the number of people studying to become teachers needs to keep rising to meet demand. 

There's been about 3,500 new domestic enrolments to initial teacher training so far this year – up 30% compared with the same time last year. 

Massey University Professor of Teacher Education John O'Neill told Mike Hosking it's not a surprise, as numbers typically rise when there's economic downturn. 

He says forecasting shows there will be an extra 100 thousand students in school by 2030. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here we go. Who doesn't want to be a teacher.
We've got a thirty percent jumping enrollments three and a
half thousand, five hundred and twenty five students this year
compeed to twenty seven hundred and fifteen last year. Primary
is up thirty one, secondaries twenty eight. EC's up twenty four.
John O'Neil's professor of Teaching Education at Mesa University and
as well as John Morning Morning Mike on these golden days.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Well, it's certainly a turnaround, isn't it. So that's good news.
And the challenge, I suppose is to find out what
are the causes? Why is it happening?

Speaker 1 (00:29):
I'm going to cause, have you got any ideas what suddenly?
It can't just be Erica Stanford and putting walls up
in the classroom Kenneth.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
No, of course it can't. It's it's partly cyclical. So
every time there's a recession or an economic downturn, numbers
in it and other training programs tend to go up.
So that's part of it. The challenge for government is
really that we're in the middle of a sort of
ten year growth cycle in school role. So Ministry's Forecasting

(00:58):
says that by twenty thirty, an extra one hundred thousand
students in school, So even though the numbers are up,
they need to be there's an ongoing challenge to keep
them in the system, and we've also got an aging
teacher workforce. The subsidy for school based placement is certainly helping,
but it's a tiny fraction. So twenty thousand subsidy get

(01:20):
people into the classroom early on, have school based teacher training.
That seems to be a real incentive for people to
take part and for schools to host students, but it's
a tiny fraction of the overall numbers, so money could
be an issue going forward. So as the other.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Interests, well, does the split interest you thirty one, twenty eight,
twenty four it's reasonably even across the sector.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, the thing I was surprised about was early childhood
numbers up to the extent that they are, particularly in
light of changes made by Minister Seymour in terms of
starting salaries and deregulation and changing the ratio. So we
know we've already got a challenge in getting people in
early childhood education, so it was a real surprise for

(02:03):
me to see those numbers holding up in the same
way that primary and secondary were very encouraging.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
John, appreciate your insight, Professor of Teaching Education at MESSI.
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