Shortage of relief teachers hitting schools

WELLINGTON: A shortage of relief teachers has forced secondary schools to leave pupils unsupervised, send classes home and even close for the day, the secondary teachers union says.

Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) president Jack Boyle said a survey of the union’s members showed more than half of teachers provided emergency cover for absent colleagues in the first four weeks of the third term this year because their school could not find a reliever.

He said 40% of the respondents said their school had combined several classes together because they could not find a reliever or a regular teacher to provide cover.

Fifteen percent said their school had used an unqualified person such as an administrative staff member to supervise a class, and 3% said their school had left senior classes without any supervision at all.

Two percent said their school had used senior pupils to oversee classes and 1% or fewer had sent some pupils home, or closed entirely.

‘‘Some of those practices are a little bit worrying,’’ Mr Boyle said.

Pupils were missing out on learning if their classes were supervised by an adult who was not a teacher, Mr Boyle said.

Teachers said they were providing more emergency cover than at the same time last year, robbing them of noncontact time used for tasks such as preparing lessons.

‘‘It’s a worsening picture year on year,’’ Mr Boyle said.

The survey was sent to 1100 PPTA members, of whom 449 responded.

The PPTA also asked 23 schools how many teachers they had discouraged from retiring because they would be hard to replace. Of those, 16 had ‘‘deferred retirees’’, which suggested there might be 223 across the entire secondary school sector.

Many relieving teachers had recently retired.