Each teacher ad can draw up to 100 applications, Jonathan Carson and Ria Elkington report.
Rachael Elliott was told she would walk out of university and straight into a teaching job.
But more than three years and 374 rejection letters later, the Hamilton 26-year-old has yet to win a full-time position. ‘‘It’s been hell, to be frank,’’ she says.
‘‘You know it’s not personal, but it’s really worn me down and you doubt yourself. It would be so much easier if I didn’t want to be teacher but that’s all I want to do.’’
Since graduating from Waikato University in 2009, she has worked as a goat milker, waitress, administrator and tutor and she picks up relief teacher jobs where possible.
‘‘You never know if you’re going to make your rent or not.’’
Miss Elliott studied all the right subjects through high school after deciding, at age 14, that she wanted to be a teacher. She completed a bachelor’s degree in English and Japanese followed by a graduate diploma in teaching.
‘‘Since then I’ve applied just about everywhere and beginning teachers don’t really get a look in,’’ she says. ‘‘I got my 374th rejection in November last year.’’
Piri Bassett is a teaching graduate who hasn’t been able to land a full-time job since she graduated in 2011. Hundreds of teaching graduates are struggling for jobs. Photo: Bruce Mercer/Fairfax NZ
It wasn’t meant to be like that. A course administrator at university told her she was exactly the kind of teacher secondary schools were looking for. She would have no trouble getting a job.
But Miss Elliott walked out of university and into what’s been described as the most competitive job market for graduate teachers in more than 40 years.
Principals are receiving up to 100 applications for every teaching position advertised and one said he believes there’s an oversupply of graduates looking for work.
There were 660 teaching graduates from Waikato University last year and only 35 teaching jobs in the region currently listed on the Education Gazette website.
Miss Elliott says she was one of 220 applicants for a beginning teacher position at an Auckland school.
After one failed application, worried that she was doing something wrong, she asked a staff member for advice to improve her chances.
She was told that the entry-level job was given to a former head of department with seven years’ experience.
‘‘That’s something I can’t compete with.
‘‘I want a real chance to prove myself. It’s really difficult to stay positive, but I am positive. Teaching is what I want to do and I know that I’ll be amazing at it. I just need someone to take a chance.’’
Of the 120 graduates in her class she says 30 went on to get jobs and ‘‘only a handful’’ were permanent.
‘‘I wish I’d known,’’ she says. ‘‘I wouldn’t have changed my career . . . but I maybe would have made some different decisions about how I went about it or when I went about it.’’
She’s now enrolled to do her masters in English and is co-teaching a paper at Waikato University.
But it’s not contributing to her two years’ teaching experience, which she’s required to complete within five years of graduating in order to be registered.
‘‘So I’m concerned that I’m going to hit my five-year barrier and I’m going to have to re-do parts of my training.’’
Piri Bassett, 32, wakes up at 6am every day, has breakfast and is ready by seven. If she doesn’t have work organised for the day she watches the morning news and waits.
That has been her routine since graduating as a teacher in 2011.
She waits for the call from a school asking if she’s available to work.
‘‘I have to be ready by seven every day, because most schools will call between 6.30 and seven and I never know where I might be going to that day. So taking into consideration morning traffic, I have to be ready to run out the door once I get the call.’’
Fulltime work in Hamilton is hard to find, she says, so she takes what relief work she can get.
‘‘When I first decided to become a teacher I did not imagine my life to be like this four years down the track.
‘‘I have applied to every school in the Hamilton, Te Awamutu, Raglan, and Cambridge areas. There is just nothing available for me.’’
After speaking with the Waikato Times on Friday, Mrs Bassett was offered a part-time, fixed-term position at Bankwood Primary in Hamilton, where she’s been relieving.
It’s only two days a week, but it will become fulltime next term until the end of the year and she’s hopeful it will lead to a permanent position.
When the principal told her she could take some time to consider the offer, she said she didn’t need to think about it – she’d take it.
Employment rates for new teaching graduates have been falling, according to Rebecca Elvy of TeachNZ, with the number getting permanent jobs in their first year dropping from 966 to 561 between 2006 and 2011.
And the number of new graduates getting any kind of teaching work in their first year, including day relief, dropped from 3700 to 3000 in the same period.
In the mid-1990s the country had a primary school teacher drought. Classes in Auckland were threatened with closure because of a lack of teachers.
The Education Minister at the time, Wyatt Creech, added primary school teaching to the Department of Immigration’s skills shortage list.
Teachers from all over the world were flown in to meet demand.
Primary teaching was taken off the list only two years ago.
However, Waikato University research predicts a similar teacher shortfall over the next five years as rolls increase and a large cohort of teachers retire.
Education Ministry figures show there will be 44,500 more primary pupils by 2019 than there were in 2011, requiring an extra 1150 teachers by 2016.
And demographic data show the number of teachers aged over 60 has more than doubled to about 6000 since 2005.
Despite the current situation and the job market forecast for graduate teachers, Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce says he will not consider limiting the number of enrolments in certain courses based on job availability.
It’s too hard to predict occupational outlook accurately, he says.
But New Zealand Educational Institute national secretary Paul Goulter says it shows a lack of planning by the government and wants more rigorous labour market forecasting to avoid the problem of excess of supply and demand of teachers.
‘‘Not being able to get a job damages the aspirations of beginning teachers and has ramifications for principals and their responsibilities in supporting the profession,’’ he says says.
‘‘There are hundreds of teacher graduates who who cannot get jobs as beginning teachers. Too many are coming out of university with nowhere to go. We will lose these people to overseas – people who have benefited from our tertiary education system. It makes no sense to train teachers and then have them leave the profession.
‘‘The different parties in education – The Teachers Council, the education unions and the ministry – should sit down and work out a better system.’’
Mrs Bassett says she’s living weekto-week, dipping into her savings and racking up expenses on her credit card. The uncertainty of relief work is taking its toll financially on the family – husband Murray and nineyear-old stepson Kane.
It’s why she didn’t hesitate in accepting last week’s job offer.
‘‘It has been tough but I love teaching,’’ she says.
‘‘I could do what some of my classmates have done and find other forms of employment to survive, but then I would not be available for relieving work.
‘‘That’s not for me. I would rather struggle financially for a while in the hope that one day it could lead to a job I love doing, than live comfortably for the rest of my life at a job I hate.’’