Teachers call for better pay
Secondary school teachers are leaving the profession because they are underpaid and don’t have the resources to properly care for students, union members say.
Members from the secondary schools teachers’ union, the Post Primary Teachers’ Association, met at the Regent on Broadway in Palmerston North yesterday to discuss the Government’s latest pay offer.
The PPTA is negotiating a new collective agreement with the Government and the union wants a pay increase to keep up with the cost of living; more guidance and pastoral care staff to work with students who are struggling; and workload controls.
Union members are meeting across the country to discuss the offer and decide the next steps should members reject the offer.
The result of the vote would be known next week.
PPTA Manawatū -Whanganui regional chairwoman Rebecca Hopper said teachers wanted workload issues reduced.
“We need an increase in pastoral care because the wellbeing needs of the students are increasing and the number of pastoral care staff in schools is not enough to actually deal with it.”
The union says teachers are seeing more kinds of social, emotional and mental health issues that have been exacerbated by Covid-19, so schools need more trained pastoral care and counselling teachers.
The cost of living was going “up and up and up”, so a pay increase would help address that and the shortage of teachers, Hopper said.
“We’re losing teachers going overseas because the pay is more attractive. The Government is trying to bring teachers in.”
Hopper said the problem with bringing in overseas teachers was getting them to learn the New Zealand system.
Many schools were struggling to fill vacancies and people were not considering teaching as a career, she said. If they were better resourced, the role would be
more attractive.
‘‘The problem is retention, and our pay is not attractive enough to retain teachers and those young ones, we can’t blame them. They can see the dollar signs in other professions.’’
Warrick Greaves, an experienced technology teacher at Tararua College in Pahīatua, was getting frustrated at what he was seeing in teaching.
‘‘How are we going to encourage people to transition from various trades to teaching when you can earn much better money in much better conditions in trades?’’
He said that there was a retention problem, and about half of the people he went through teachers’ college with had left the profession after three to five years.
‘‘What business can offer that sort of turnover . . . we treat them so poorly they’re leaving the profession.’’
The union’s national president, Melanie Webber, attended the meeting and said there were strong feelings across the board that the offer didn’t do enough.
She said teachers were reluctant to take any form of action because it had such a big impact on students and others, but having qualified, specialist teachers in the classroom was too much of an issue to ignore.