Minister Takes Steps To Support Teachers

On behalf of the many teachers in Early Childhood Education and Primary, we applaud the Education Minister’s move to fund teacher registrations and practising certificates that teachers currently bear.

“This is a very positive move by Minister Stanford,” says Te Rito Maioha CE Kathy Wolfe, “this will help some 40,000 teachers, providing an incentive for teachers to remain, and join the teaching workforce.”

“We hope this announcement forms part of a larger education workforce strategy to encourage teachers to choose this profession, and for others, to remain in the profession.”

“The funding for three years to reduce the burden on our teachers is a significant step in the right direction, especially as the Ministry of Education has admitted that the sector will have an undersupply of 750 primary teachers and 500 secondary teachers this year, as well as the shortages in ECE.”

"Every lever must be pulled to ensure Aotearoa maintains a high-quality workforce dedicated to teaching our tamariki and young people - putting their educational success at the heart of everything we do."

“While this announcement is significant and welcome, the Minister of Education needs to reassure the ECE teaching workforce that her commitment to a quality education system is not undermined by Recommendation Ten in the ECE Regulations Review.”

"That recommendation risks lowering the quality of early childhood education and undermining the teaching profession in Aotearoa. However, we will hold Minister Stanford accountable for ensuring that all teachers in ECE are qualified through initial teacher education. We take some reassurance from her statement reported in the media on 12 February, where she said, 'It is absolutely essential that we have qualified teachers in the room if we want to get outcomes for children before they come to school.'”

Minister Stanford went onto say, ‘We must make sure that early childhood education is just that - education and not a baby sitting service because if you want young people to be school-ready and hit the ground running they need to have good oral language skills, good numeracy skills and self-regulation and that requires qualified teachers in the classroom.’ Minister Stanford, RNZ Removing teacher requirements could be devastating, Teaching Council says.

“It’s great to see Minister Stanford’s commitment to a high-quality teaching workforce,” says Mrs Wolfe. “However, we urge the Minister to work with Minister Seymour to ensure today’s positive intent is not cancelled out by the concerns of ECE teachers as they worry about their professional qualifications being undervalued or watered down to reduce the teaching shortage and reduce costs. Teacher shortages are not caused by having a qualification and a qualified workforce.”

“The uncoupling of funding from ITE qualifications is a significant threat to both the quality delivery of early learning, and to the profession of the teaching workforce. Such a policy will have a significant unintended consequence of undermining the profession, an outcome that would exacerbate the current teacher shortage due to undervaluation.”

“Minister Stanford acknowledged a teacher shortage following the Ministry of Education’s significant error in the 2023 Teacher Demand and Supply Planning Project, underscoring the urgent need to prioritise teacher retention and recruitment across the entire education sector, zero to eighteen. Today’s announcement is good news and a step in the right direction, however, we look forward to working with the Minister and Ministry as more needs to be done,” says Mrs Wolfe.

Notes:

This funding will cover the annual costs over a three-year period, including:

• New registration and provisional certificates (domestic): $1.60m

• Renewal of practising certificates: $13.53m

• Limited Authority to Teach: $0.430m

• Fee and levy including surcharge to move from provisional to full certificate: $2.03m

• A one-off cost of $0.500m to make any necessary changes to the Teaching Council’s IT systems to implement this initiative.

Recommendation 10:

• Allow greater flexibility in workforce qualifications to support access and quality across all areas and service types

Regulatory-Review-of-Early-Childhood-Education-full-report.pdf

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