Otago schools suffer shortage of relieving teachers
A LACK of relief teachers is creating dire situations in Otago schools, an Otago Primary Principals’ Association (OPPA) survey has found.
The Otago relief teacher pool has about 44 relievers to fill in for ill teachers, but during terms 2 and 3 this year there had been more than 40 times when the pool was unable to fill teaching positions.
Of the 61 schools that responded to the survey, 52 (85.2%) said they were unable to put a teacher in front of one of their classes at least once during that time.
Ten schools reported they had that problem more than four times in the past two terms.
Most of the affected schools said the principal stepped in to fill the voids, or affected classes were split up and spread over other classes for the day.
OPPA chairwoman and Musselburgh School principal Debbie Smith said there had been instances in some Southland schools where principals had to tell parents not to send certain class levels to school because their teacher was sick and there was noone to fill in.
She said concern was growing among Otago schools because it was impacting on pupils’ education and the wellbeing of teaching staff.
‘‘There was an awful lot of sickness around last term.
‘‘It impacts not only on the children’s learning, but it’s also the teachers’ health and wellbeing.
‘‘Teachers are coming to school sick because they know relievers are so scarce, and they don’t get better and of course it compounds the problem with their own health.
‘‘The communities are starting to get a bit grumbly as well because their children’s education is being affected.’’
OPPA secretary Chris McKinlay said the relief pool had received more requests for teachers in the past term than it had received for the past year.
‘‘If this continues, it’s going to be a real issue.’’
He said the Otago relief pool was working hard to recruit more relievers, but the requirements of the teacher registration system were creating ‘‘definite difficulties’’.
He believed relief teachers were Subject to Confirmation registered teachers because they did not work fulltime.
That classification meant relief teachers were required to participate in Teacher Education Refresh (TER) programmes which were only run in places other than Dunedin and cost several thousand dollars to attend, Mr McKinlay said.
‘‘For a lot of people, it was too much hassle and they let their registration lapse.
‘‘They tell me there used to be 70plus relievers in our reliever pool. There seems to be far less people doing that as a profession now. ’’
Mrs Smith said another problem was that Dunedin was a difficult city for those teachers who wanted to secure permanent positions.
‘‘A lot of teachers coming out of teachers’ college would maybe get longterm relieving positions or fixed term positions, but often not permanent.
‘‘If they wanted to go to Auckland, they would get a permanent position, but if they wanted to stay in Dunedin, it would be quite hard.
‘‘So often they go into another profession.’’
Many were put off by fulltime teaching work conditions.
‘‘Those first couple of years are jolly hard for teachers to get their heads around curriculum, behaviour management, school systems, communities, parents — it’s a massive job.’’
An Education Council New Zealand spokesman said many relief teachers, specialist teachers and teachers with Subject to Confirmation practising certificates were not required to do TER programmes.
‘‘The Teacher Education Refresh programme is for provisionally certificated teachers who have not been recommended for full certification after first registering six or more years ago, and for those teachers applying for registration with the Education Council for the first time whose qualification was completed six or more years ago.’’