Urgent action needed on teacher oversupply crisis

Urgent action needed on teacher oversupply crisis

28 July 2015

The Government needs to urgently tackle the looming crisis of a massive oversupply of beginner teachers.

NZEI National Secretary Paul Goulter says this situation has been building for a number of years because the Government has continued to ignore what was a very predictable market failure in education.

“The Government has known for years that there has been a growing oversupply of newly graduated teachers yet it has refused to do anything.

"As a result there are now hundreds of beginning teachers who cannot complete their full certification despite investing years of time, energy and money into gaining qualifications.

"This is extremely unfair for those graduates but it will also have long term damaging consequences for education.

"Many new teachers are now employed on day to day or short term relieving jobs where they don’t get the professional development, skills and mentoring required to help them become great classroom practitioners.

"So the long term consequences for quality teaching and learning are clear".

Paul Goulter says there are solutions.

"Obviously better workforce planning is needed for a start. But graduates should expect to have the right support in place so they can complete their registration process.

"This happens in other sectors such as in medicine where graduates are provided with work and mentoring in order to complete their qualifications".

He says it is totally irresponsible for the Government to continue to ignore what is becoming a major system crisis in education.

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