The Waitaki App contacted all three secondary schools in Ōamaru to ask for the teachers’ perspective on the industrial action which has two year groups per day being told to stay at home, from this week, until possibly the end of the term, unless an agreement can be reached with the Ministry of Education.

We received the following response from Emma Prosser, the Post-Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) representative for Waitaki Boys’ High School, and have decided to print it in its entirety, as she wrote it:

Let me start by thanking you for putting the teacher's point of view out there, and then let me follow up and ask you, and any of your readers:

Why are you not a teacher?

I believe the answer lies somewhere in the following points:

I am certain every school and every region are facing the same conditions - we desperately need to attract people to the teaching profession, student teacher numbers are in free-fall, the number of people being trained as teachers is at an all-time low and beginning teachers are quitting the profession for easier jobs with better money (the attrition rate is 40% within five years).

The government plans on filling in the shortfall in recruitment by attracting teachers from abroad, but other countries are also competing for these teachers and are offering better working conditions and pay.

The shortfall of secondary teachers in 2023 is approximately 40 teachers. Next year the shortfall is expected to be 510, and the following year, 620. (source: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/480840/chance-of-secondary-school-teacher-shortage-in-2023-oversupply-for-primary-schools)

The PPTA did a recruitment survey with secondary school principals, and it was noted that 24% of advertised jobs had no suitable applicants and 28% had one suitable applicant. 

More and more schools are having to hire unqualified teachers or limited-authority-to-teach (LATs) teachers to fill the gaps. This leads to huge on-going issues, not just for education but for our society, short term and long term.

Teachers want to ensure every child has a qualified teacher in front of them, but we can't do that if we are not attracting new blood into the profession.

We don't want to be rostering students home, or not teaching them, but we need to get teaching back to a respected, sought-after career option, and that lies with the government.

A beginning teacher (secondary G3+) is currently on a (2021) salary of $55,498, which is approximately $4 an hour more than minimum wage, based on 52-weeks/40-hours a week. 

This figure does not take into consideration the student loan repayments of about $2.70 an hour based on the same time-frame, nor the extra hours of planning and professional development (PD) a new teacher has to undertake on top of the planning and PD that teachers have to do on a regular basis (got to love those 12 weeks of 'holidays'!). 

The government’s offer is to increase this by $7,239 to $63,187 in December of 2024. This is an increase of 13%, but it's spread over more than three years, which isn't even close to keeping up with inflation.

A top of the scale teacher ($90,000 in July 2021) is being offered $100k by December 2024. This is an 11% increase, but again that is between 2021 and the end of 2024.  

Images supplied

As you can see from both pictures, what the government is offering by the end of 2024, is what they should be paying by the end of March 2023, just to keep up our spending power. 

Teachers are not even asking for a payrise! 

Also bear in mind these new pay rates will probably apply for at least a couple more years beyond that, because of the Ministry of Education’s delaying tactics when it comes to negotiations. 

Effectively, the government is telling teachers to take a pay cut, but you have to do more work for it. How is that making the job attractive and sought-after?

The Government has offered a $5210 lump sum, which is made up of a $4500, before tax incentive, and a $710 lump sum to cover the cost of our three-yearly professional registration fee, which teachers must pay to remain a certified teacher. 

This registration fee cannot be claimed back from our employer or charged out pro-rata to our customers, like some other professions. 

The $4500 lump sum (once tax is removed, it is less than $3000 in the hand) is to make up for the fact that our salaries should have been renegotiated in June of 2022, and this is just a clever (and cheaper) way of bribing us into accepting a lower offer without actually giving us the backdated pay rise.

Management units and allowances are paid for the extra responsibilities that middle managers, such as heads of departments, and teachers in charge of subjects, carry. 

These are not up for renegotiation which means that they are also being devalued through inflation. 

The Government is also offering part-time teachers an 11% pay cut, by removing the 11% loading they currently have on their pay, so that they can attend meetings and professional development. It is suggesting part-time teachers can do this work for free, during their own time, until 2025, when they will be allocated pro-rata time within their timetable.

Add to this: 

• Schools are being inadequately funded - the operational grant they receive has not increased to meet inflation.

• There is increased need for more guidance and pastoral care. New Zealand teachers face an increasing load of neurodiverse students within our classrooms. I hope you watched Paddy Gower Has Issues last week, to give you a taste of what staff in schools are facing.

• The work teachers are doing, on top of their core job of teaching students, in order to implement the new NCEA standards and National Curriculum changes, despite the Ministry consistently failing to meet its own timeline with regard to providing resources and support.

• We are losing teachers and potential teachers because the pay is just not competitive with other industries, and our students are missing out on more amazing teachers.

• We are losing teachers because of working conditions. 

Teachers are hopeful of a quick resolution, but it is down to the Ministry and Government. 

Students will have plenty of work to continue with when they are rostered home, as that's what teachers do. We do not want them falling any further behind. 

Students need to get this work done to lessen the impact. Knowing our amazing and dedicated teachers, there is plenty of extra help available when our students are at school. We care about their progress too.

And finally, I want to thank parents and the community. Thank you - your patience and understanding make a difference. 

If you would like to support us further, please consider emailing your local MP and voicing your concerns.