‘I don’t want to have a child in Auckland’
Two-thirds of new teachers either leaving or thinking about leaving for cost reasons
Two-thirds of Auckland’s new teachers plan to leave the city, and many female teachers are postponing parenthood because of the city’s housing costs, a new survey has found.
The survey of 450 new teachers in the primary and intermediate teachers’ union, the NZ Educational Institute, has found that two-thirds of them, including 94 per cent of male teachers under 35, are either leaving or thinking about leaving Auckland.
Forty per cent of female teachers under 30 are deferring having their own children due to Auckland’s high cost of living.
And 64 per cent of all the new teachers have given up hope of ever owning their own homes.
The exodus of young teachers from Auckland is a major factor in a mounting teacher shortage in the city which Auckland Primary Principals Association head Kevin Bush has described as the worst he has seen in 30 years.
More than half of schools surveyed by the association this month said they had three or four teacher vacancies for the third term which begins today.
The latest survey is of Auckland members of the Educational Institute’s New Educator Network, who are mostly new teachers in their first two years of teaching. About 10 per cent of the sample are still in training.
Second-year Greenhithe School teacher Natasha Jones, 25, and physiotherapist Adam Herbison, 26, say they are ready to have children soon but can’t afford to have them in Auckland.
“We want to have kids soon. We want to get married. It’s just like we can’t,” said Jones.
“I’m actually putting off having a child because I don’t want to have a child in Auckland.”
The couple has saved towards a house for four years but can’t see any hope of buying in Auckland.
“We should be looking to buy our own property, but the best place we have been looking at is still $500,000 and that’s on the other side of Auckland,” Jones said.
“We can’t afford to live by ourselves. We are paying almost $1000 in rent between five of us. That to me is dead money.”
Jones and Herbison are looking at moving to Kerikeri, where they have family members: “Or to be honest, anywhere other than Auckland.
“We are definitely looking at moving out of town, but just because my partner has just graduated, it’s not that easy getting a deposit,” Jones said.
Angela Hampton, 30, a third-year teacher at Somerville Intermediate in Howick, told her principal on Friday that she would have to look for a new job outside Auckland at the end of this year. “I love my school,” she said. “I have been at Somerville since I started, and the staff there, I call them my Auckland family. I’m really blessed with that job.
“When I told the principal he said, ‘I’ll do anything to keep you here’. But I think he is aware of the problem in Auckland. I said, ‘I don’t want to leave but I can’t actually afford to stay’.”
Hampton, who worked in banking in Britain before coming home to train as a teacher, said she had “gone backwards” financially, paying 40 per
A normal person would wonder why I didn’t chuck it all in. British teacher
A British teacher recruited to start at an Auckland school today says getting approval to teach in New Zealand has been a “Monty Python” experience.
The teacher, who asked not to be named because he and his wife plan to apply for NZ residence, has a master’s degree in education from a top British university and 10 years’ teaching experience, and experience as a professional writer.
But it cost him $758 and took almost three months to get his British qualification verified by the NZ Qualifications Authority (NZQA).
Then he had to apply to the Education Council for registration to teach in New Zealand, and to Immigration NZ for a work visa.
“With every government department — NZQA, the teacher register, the visa process — every single one always asked for something to be done differently. You just feel like the system is there to delay you,” he said.
“It’s been a Monty Python sketch for me. A normal person would wonder why I didn’t chuck it all in and go home.
“I was committed to it, but you feel like you are a prisoner in an unfair system. It’s very difficult.”
The Government allocated $9 million last year for measures to solve the teacher shortage, including a campaign to recruit British teachers.
But some schools recruiting overseas said they were also being forced to jump through more official hoops to recruit them.
Auckland Grammar School principal Tim O’Connor said schools now had to advertise several times here and prove there were no suitable applicants in the country before they could recruit from overseas.
“We are having to justify to Immigration NZ the reason for appointing someone from the UK. That does take some time,” he said.
A spokeswoman said NZQA received 660 applications to assess overseas teaching qualifications in the past six months, up 18.7 per cent.