Secondary school teacher shortage hitting

A current shortage of qualified high school teachers is a "perfect storm", the University of Waikato's pro vice-chancellor of education says.

The Ministry of Education's most recent forecast predicted secondary schools will have a national shortfall of 710 teachers this year.

Pro vice-chancellor of education Claire McLachlan told Nine to Noon the problem has long been signalled as baby boomers retire and student numbers increase.

"I think you've kind of at the moment got the perfect storm, you know, you did have quite a big, steep growth in immigration 10 or more years ago and you've also got baby boomers retiring."

She said one of the impacts was an increase in teachers teaching subjects outside of their expertise.

McLaughlin said Australia has been doing a lot of research on "out of field teaching", and New Zealand has been seeing a similar pattern.

While this practice was problematic at upper levels, she said at lower levels a good teacher could "understand what the curriculum's asking of them" and then do an "okay" job.

The shortage was also an issue for McLaughlin's own student teachers who were having difficulties to find placements in classrooms.

"We know that the load of carrying those placements is not evenly shared across the country."

She said in a 2024 report by the Ministry of Education Workforce Division, it was clear that Auckland and Hamilton are training most teachers with Canterbury carrying the bulk of training in the South Island.

There are also nine new subjects being rolled out next year as part of the new curriculum, including energy and infrastructure, engineering technology and tourism.

McLaughlin said not all schools will have teachers whose expertise overlap with the new subjects.

"I would imagine there's probably going to be a little bit of shuffling of the chessboard within schools to see who can do what.

"Then trying to identify people within local communities who could work possibly initially under limited authority to teach and then qualify through something like Waikato's alternative entry pathway to teaching."

She said it would take same time and there is a possibility that at the beginning only the bigger schools will be able to offer some of those vocational pathways.

McLaughlin said the idea that teachers are not being retained in the profession may be an "urban myth".

She said in the last report around teacher shortages the retention rate was around the 90 percent mark.

"The bigger issues, I think, are in our regional areas in New Zealand ... there are some areas which really struggle to get the sort of teachers in the subjects that are needed."

She said subjects such as science, technology, mathematics and te reo Māori were facing more shortages.