Temporary relief to fill job posts

About 100 non-teachers are filling specialist roles in Waikato schools – with special permission.

A limited authority to teach, from the Education Council, allows someone who isn’t a registered teacher to instruct students.

But they must have specialist or in-demand skills, and their temporary permission lasts for between two weeks and three years.

The Education Council granted 94 for the Waikato in the 2014-2015 financial year and the national figure was 1019 – but 48 were turned down.

Instrumental music tutors, te reo Maori and technology specialists are the most common authority holders, according to the council.

But a limited authority to teach (LAT) is also sometimes issued to day relievers in remote parts of New Zealand.

Hamilton principal Kelvin Whiting was surprised to hear there were almost 100 in the Waikato, and thought the number would have been lower.

‘‘It’s really just a stop-gap measure. It’s only temporary, so you can’t have somebody on an LAT forever,’’ he said.

‘‘You might be wanting a metal technology teacher for instance. And you advertise and you don’t get anybody, or you find that the person isn’t suitable for the position. Then you may know of somebody else that could do it.’’

In that sense, it gave schools some extra ‘‘flexibility’’.

At Hillcrest High School LATs were most commonly used for music tutors who came into schools for a few hours at a time.

‘‘They’re not trained teachers as such but, of course, they have got a lot of experience in teaching musical instruments,’’ Whiting said. Within the last year the school also got an LAT for a Hamilton woman to teach a portion of a Maori studies course.

‘‘I’ve got a te reo teacher fulltime here but we were running a senior Maori studies course at the school,’’ Whiting said.

‘‘So one of our local people from Ngati Haua that had expertise from the area that we were specifically looking for... she was on an LAT in order to be doing that.’’

PPTA president Angela Roberts said the PPTA was comfortable with instrumental music teachers and day relievers having an LAT. But the union would be concerned if there was an increase in those issued for specialist positions, especially given just under 50 per cent of secondary positions advertised in 2014 had to be readvertised at least once.

‘‘[LATs] do have a role to play but... they are the wrong solution to a supply problem,’’ Roberts said.

Sometimes when they were used it was a case of ‘‘What else can we do? Because we’ve got to put someone in front of these kids?’’, she said.

The limited authority to teach was separate to teacher registration, the Education Councils said.

Anyone who could get registration instead, such as a teacher who had let theirs lapse, was not eligible.