Opinion: The teacher shortage solution is staring us all in the face

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The number of Kiwis applying to go into teaching has halved since 2010. Photo / 123RF
THREE KEY FACTS
Alwyn Poole founded the Mt Hobson Middle School and the Villa NCEA Academy in Newmarket and held support sport coaching roles at Hamilton Boys’ High School and St Cuthbert’s College (Epsom). He now heads Innovative Education Consultants, conducting research into the education system.
OPINION

We have heard
recently that the number of New Zealanders applying to go into teaching has halved since 2010 and that those graduating as teachers has dropped by a third.

Clive Jones of the Teaching Council then said something that I believe to be entirely wrong when he claimed that teaching was not the attractive career prospect it once was.
What has changed are societal behaviours and patterns. The education sector has stayed longing for the “good old days”, protected their respective patches, and not adapted quickly or fully enough.
Add to that the incessant whining of the teachers’ unions – year in, year out – as to how tough it is to be a teacher, how horrible children and young people are, and how the pay is simply not good enough.
They do this while living in the dark ages with a collective contract that rates all teachers as being equally able and allows little incentivising for difficult-to-staff schools and locations, and difficult subject areas to attract people into.
Young people are now less likely to emerge from 13 years at school and then four at university to look to train for another year and immediately dedicate themselves to a long-term career.
Teaching is a fabulous occupation and nothing has changed since I started in 1991 that would lead me to another role if I had my own DeLorean and was able to predict lightning strikes.
You get to work with young people and the vast majority of them are positive, well-behaved and optimistic. Your day is spent among colleagues who are generally very dedicated and purposeful, interested in others, intelligent and articulate.
Each day is a constant learning exercise for yourself as you continuously develop subject matter, learn from your children and get to know many of them well, interact with families – and have the satisfaction of seeing many of your students grow through the good and bad to become positive and contributing adults.
There is a lot of humour involved, opportunity for social interactions and you have pretty much the best set of holidays of any occupation in the country.
What is difficult is being a good teacher. It isn’t just the extra hours you are likely to spend preparing, assessing and reporting.
It is also the ability to learn from others and the willingness to do all of the extra yards such as sports coaching, lunchtime tutoring, help with productions, showing care over and above. It is through these things that you often learn the most and become a part of a teaching and learning community, as opposed to the person who ticks the boxes and takes the pay.
Most of the very best conversations with parents are on the sidelines of sports fixtures or after productions. Teaching does have stresses. More often than not though they are bought on by poor leadership within a school where staff are under-supported or over-burdened by management (or Ministry of Education compliance).
Good teachers are able to swat that away and understand that the only things that should be done in a school are those that improve the education of the students.
New Zealand needs good and great teachers and they are out there.
But they are far less likely to be young graduates as one of our societal changes is that people in their early 20s are less likely to be able to cope with the stresses or have the necessary work ethic.
This is especially so when a significant amount of routine is required, some long days and late nights and plenty of the time your contribution goes unnoticed.
The people who can deal with those demands in 2024 are people from 35 years onwards who have a work record, have significant life experiences, and may have children with all of the relevant experiences that go with that.
Many of these people will not only have strength of character, energy and perseverance but will be choosing to enter the profession from a much more considered outlook. They will have added applied experience to their academic learning and be of far higher value in their subject teaching than otherwise.
There are two problems with this. The first is that these people will not be clipping tickets for the universities and traditional teacher training pathways and those institutions will challenge major change regardless of the good for our children.
The second is that these wonderful teaching prospects are far more likely to have families to support and mortgages to pay. They simply need a sound income and cannot take a year off.
This is also the result of an economy that has changed, with higher housing costs and both parents always needing to work. The solution is to pay them fulltime to train in schools and, with support, let them loose on students.
The unions will squeal that they don’t even know the word pedagogy and that teaching is a highly specialised role. In part they are right but the vast majority of the learning to be a good teacher is done on the job. Have holiday courses for the other aspects that need to be learned. Teach First NZ is part-way towards this new ideal and the Teachers’ Institute is also doing great work.
The Government now needs to fully step up, pay these people fully straight away, vet applicants well – and open up a whole new pathway to those actually best suited to the role in 2024.
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