Kate Gainsford: Secondary Principals' Council Chair on the shortage of secondary school teachers

There are teacher shortages across a range of subjects in secondary school, as there generally are at the start of each year.  

More than 400 principal and teaching roles are currently being advertised in the Education Gazette.  

In 2024 there were almost 1600 vacancies, a similar number to recent comparable years.  

Secondary Principals' Council Chair Kate Gainsford told Ryan Bridge schools are employing a lot of teachers from overseas.  

She says it's a worldwide problem, but we also need to be building up a local pool of teachers. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Schools scrambling to fill teacher vacancies. Three hundred and forty
six full time jobs currently up for grabs. Apparently students
get to return next week. They'll be happy about that,
but who's going to be teaching them? Kate Gains for
Secondary Principles. Sorry, Secondary Principles Council chairs with us.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Kate, good morning, good morning, whate it. What types of
teachers are you missing here?

Speaker 3 (00:20):
Well, historically there's been sort of ebbs and flows of
the types of teachers, and we have seen in the
past shortages of maths and science and technology and the
teachers ofterdel but what we're seeing now is much more
widespread than that with in secondary schools across the book board, English,

(00:40):
Physical Education.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
The lot apparently there was I saw a comment from
a principle that they've got lots of applications from foreign
trained teachers, but they want local ones.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Can beggars be choosers.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
Well, actually, schools are employing a lot of overseas teachers
and some of the international education systems are really suffering
feeling the result of that. So I know that lots
of New Zealand schools have employed a lot of people
from the Philippines and from Fiji, and so we are
employing a lot of people from overseas as fast as

(01:15):
we can.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
So we're not being picky. We're not being picky.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
Well, all schools must be picky when they are when
they are advertising and selecting people to go in front
of students. But the field is not big.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
So what do we need to do about that.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
You're obviously not advocating for getting more foreign trained teachers
and then stealing them from other countries, so you want
to build up the local workforce.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Well, I think it's we're having to do both. We're
having to have people from overseas, and we've had some
very very good teachers come into New Zealand from overseas.
But it is a worldwide problem. But at the same time, yes,
we do need to be building up our own pool
of people and it's a bit of a doing it
as as as we could be because this problem has

(02:02):
been hanging around now for some years.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Kate, thank you very much for that. Kate Gains did
the Secondary Principles counseled chair with us. For more from
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