Teleconference teaching could help shortage
WELLINGTON: A group of 65 schools says the Government could alleviate the teacher shortage by helping more schools share teachers online.
The Education Ministry has forecast a shortage of up to 2000 teachers by 2025 and schools in the NetNZ network believe their model could help.
Darren Sudlow from NetNZ said for many years it had helped mostly South Island schools share teachers. There were probably about 360 schools involved around the country.
‘‘What it means is you are locating specialist teachers in various parts of the country and you’re able to enrol students into those courses; it means you don’t have to actually have your teachers located on site in your school,’’ he said.
Mr Sudlow said the model could help alleviate the teacher shortage, but the cost of participating was deterring more schools from joining such groups. To join NetNZ, schools needed to allocate 0.2 of a fulltime teacher to the programme and a further 0.1 of a teacher or the equivalent in money, $70008000, he said.
‘‘We’ve had many schools come to us over the years who would love to get involved, but the barrier is . . . they’re cashstrapped,’’ he said.
‘‘We need to think outside the box with this. We’re constantly thinking we must have teachers on site, must employ them, we need more of them, but in fact part of the thinking is, how do we create some efficiencies and scale this, because they don’t actually have to be located in one school,’’ he said.
‘‘If it were funded it would grow and probably grow exponentially and we would have something at a national level that would work.’’
Mr Sudlow said the Tomorrow’s Schools review had concluded more collaboration between schools would create ‘‘a whole heap of efficiencies that we don’t currently have’’.
He said NetNZ provided ‘‘highly connected’’ teaching using the internet and videoconferencing with small groups of students.
Ministry of Education deputy secretary early learning and student achievement Ellen MacGregorReid said the ministry already supported IT infrastructure in schools which they could use to form virtual learning networks and it funded targeted language programmes.
Auckland Secondary Principals Association president Richard Dykes said sharing teachers online was not straightforward because schools’ class timetables had to be synchronised and it tended to rely on students being disciplined and motivated. — RNZ