Slow processing of overseas applicants adds to teacher woes

Overseas teachers hired late last year amid a chronic shortage are only just arriving in the country – halfway into the first term of the school year – due to the time taken to get qualifications approved.

Kate Gainsford, principal of Wellington’s Aotea College, began recruiting for this year’s vacancies in August, securing a maths teacher from Fiji, a UK-trained science teacher from Australia, and a food technology teacher from South Africa – who arrived last week. Slowness in processing international qualification assessment (IQA) applications was just another hurdle in teacher recruitment, she said. ‘‘Those delays are still affecting schools.’’

A written parliamentary question by MP Erica Stanford to Education Minister Jan Tinetti found it took NZ Qualifications Authority (NZQA) an average of 46 business days to process standard IQA applications in January this year.

It took 58 business days to process applications relating to those on the skills shortage list and 71 days to process teaching IQAs.

‘‘I think it is a long time,’’ said Gainsford of the delays.

‘‘And it is after all the best efforts that schools and employers are going to, to attract people.

‘‘It is an added difficulty for our new to New Zealand teachers.’’

Overseas teachers received a reduced income until those qualifications were assessed.

‘‘It is not a swift and streamlined process to welcome new teachers into the country.’’

Stanford, the National Party education spokesperson, said the delays were causing ‘‘needless bottlenecks’’ for migrants.

‘‘NZQA needs to throw everything it can at processing IQAs as soon as possible, so we can get desperately needed skilled migrants into the country. Schools are telling me that these delays are causing needless uncertainty for teachers looking to . . . teach in our classrooms.’’ It was not good enough that principals were left ‘‘scrambling’’ to find teachers to fill the shortages, Stanford said.

‘‘We need to be rolling out the red carpet for migrants and that starts with processing their applications on time.’’

NZQA’s deputy chief executive of quality assurance, Eve McMahon, said there had been a ‘‘significant and sustained increase’’ in IQAs since the border opened and the Government made changes to immigration settings to give residency to teachers.

New Zealand’s current evaluation timeframe, between 10 and 14 weeks, was less than the recommended processing time of within 16 weeks laid out in international treaties. ‘‘We continue to monitor the number of applications received – currently up to 500 per week – and adjust staff levels to account for changes in demand,’’ McMahon said. The international qualifications evaluation team had more than doubled, from 20 to 48, over the past six months to manage the increase in applications.

NZQA had also worked with Immigration NZ so visa applicants no longer needed to receive an outcome from their IQA before applying and could rather provide evidence one had been submitted.

‘‘These changes are proving successful, with applications for teaching IQAs – where the applicant has provided all the relevant documents – being evaluated within 7-10 working days.’’

She said there was always likely to be a ‘‘small number of applications which take a relatively long time to process’’, usually due to delays in receiving responses or missing information relating to the application.

Tinetti said NZQA had employed additional evaluation staff, prioritised applications where they know a job offer has been made, the applicant is on the ‘‘Green List’’, or it has been made under the Zero-Fee Teaching IQA initiative.

‘‘It is not a swift and streamlined process.’’

Kate Gainsford

principal of Aotea College