Over supply of primary teachers a disgrace

Over supply of primary teachers a disgrace

It is nothing short of astonishing that the NZ taxpayer has funded the training of twice as many primary teachers than are needed to meet demand and yet here in NZ we have an immediate shortage of some 1700 early childhood teachers. Mallard notes that he slapped a moratorium on new teacher training courses in 2000.

We hardly need reminding of that! His blanket moratorium is just one of the many union driven Mallard "initiatives" that have cut off the supply of trained early childhood teachers. The fact that primary teachers get no recognition for their qualification if they wish to work in the early childhood sector only exacerbates the problem and it is little wonder they are heading overseas in droves when they can not find jobs in NZ. It's a disgrace that training providers have been funded to train teachers we can't use but have failed to train sufficient teachers for those parts of the education sector with shortages.

I must have misunderstood the government's tertiary education strategy and the role of TEC where they talk of "collaboration and co-operation in the tertiary education system, and a greater system connectedness to wider New Zealand businesses, communities, iwi and enterprises".

There seems instead to be a very big dis-connectedness between supply and demand in teacher training and it is our youngest children who suffer yet again.

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