Demand for secondary teachers

WELLINGTON: The demand for teachers will ease in primary schools in the next three years, but get much worse in secondary schools, a new forecast from the Education Ministry shows.

The ministry yesterday announced results from a new system for estimating future teacher supply and demand.

The forecast projected primary school enrolments would stop increasing next year at more than 500,000 children, and the supply of primary teachers would meet demand by 2023.

But enrolments in secondary schools would increase from about 2021 to exceed 300,000 pupils by 2024. The forecast said the increase would drive up the demand for secondary teachers from 26,040 this year to 28,550 by 2025, an increase of 2500.

Without government action, the supply of secondary teachers would remain unchanged and the gap between supply and demand would grow from a few hundred to a shortfall of 2210 by 2025.

The ministry’s deputy secretary of early learning and student achievement, Ellen MacGregorReid said the initiatives it was taking to increase the supply of teachers should be sufficient to avoid the shortage.

She said the measures included more help for schools recruiting teachers from overseas, and one recruitment agency had received more than 1000 expressions of interest from teachers in other countries.

The ministry’s forecast said the supply of primary school teachers would be 650 lower than demand in 2019, and the supply of secondary teachers would be 170 lower than demand next year.

In Auckland, the mismatch between supply and demand would leave the city’s primary schools short of 260 teachers next year, while its secondary schools would be short of 130 teachers.

The ministry said there were enough teachers to cover the positions it funded on the basis of each school’s enrolments, but schools were choosing to employ more teachers than that using their own funds.

The percentage of teachers employed above schools’ rollbased entitlements was 2.8% in primary schools and 7% in secondary schools, it said.

The forecast showed schools were employing hundreds of teachers over the age of 65, and some who were over 75.

The ministry said its forecasting tool was based on birth rates, migration figures, and past trends for teachers leaving and entering the workforce.

It showed net migration of schoolaged children had risen sharply from a net loss of about 2000 children in 2013 to a net gain of nearly 12,000 in 2018.

However, the ministry forecast the net gain from migration would stabilise at more than 6000 children per year by about 2024.