PETER WILLIAMS: How to fix the trainee teacher shortage

Ever thought of returning to the old system?

What a surprise. Teaching is not an attractive career for school leavers or graduates. The number of students training to be in charge of your child’s education has dropped from 21,205 to 18,490 in the last decade.

At the same time, the immigration-led population increase means we’ll have our highest ever school roll next year - close to 850,000 students.

That’s serious. This year the teaching workforce could be 1250 short, according to the Ministry of Education.

There are solutions staring the politicians in the face if they have the courage to put them in place.

Teaching is a job I like to think I know a bit about. I’ve never been one myself but both my parents were, as was my sister and my late first wife. I spent my first 42 years living with teachers.

All four, across two generations, were trained at what we used to call Teachers Training Colleges or TTCs. There was no doubt about the role of those institutions. The students trained to be teachers by, well, teaching. They went out on what was quaintly called a section, whereby they would spend anything from a week to a term actually inside a classroom, teaching students under supervision from the usual classroom teacher.

In one of the most ill-advised moves in this country’s tertiary education history the TTCs were overtaken by universities from 1990 onwards with the passing of the Education Amendment Act.

The last TTCs to succumb, in Dunedin and Christchurch, became part of their respective universities on January 1, 2007.

A report from the time quotes the then Minister of Tertiary Education Michael Cullen boasting of what he perceived as the benefits of the mergers. None of them involved the actual training of teachers but rather wooly concepts such as “stronger teacher education research to underpin and support educational policy and development.”

As well as the universities, other institutions could offer teacher training too. Currently there are 26 places where you can gain a qualification allowing you to be registered as a teacher.

Not coincidentally education standards began to fall around the same time as the change in the training system. In the year 2000 the first Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA) results were published. We were good. Third in the world for maths, 4th in reading and in the top ten for science.

Twenty three years later, after various disastrous experiments in teaching techniques and teacher training, we’d dropped to 10th in reading, 11th in science and an embarrassing 23rd in maths.

The other important aspect of teacher training up till 1990 was that TTC students were paid to train, and in return guaranteed that they would work as a teacher for as long as they were paid to train. So you had to work for at least three years after leaving college to pay off your bond. Those who went to university on what was called a studentship, and then did a year at a TTC to prepare themselves for the classroom, were paid a salary every year they were at university as well.

In the last thirty five years teaching standards have lowered because there is little actual instruction about how to be a teacher. So many young teachers are just not prepared for what hits them on day one of their new job, namely about thirty boisterous kids who can read the room quickly and sus out the ability of the newbie to control them. Many are the stories I’ve heard of first year teachers completely overwhelmed by the behaviour of their charges they just quit. Some long term classroom contact during their teacher training would have had them far better prepared.

The not surprising reaction from the teacher unions about the drop off in teaching trainees is that the pay and conditions are not good enough. As always with the PPTA and NZEI you take these grizzles with a very big salt tablet.

What other job, no matter how hopeless you are at it, guarantees you a hundred thousand dollar annual salary after at most 11 years? That’s because of the automatic progression up the salary scale, no matter how well or badly you performed in the classroom.

And then there’s the twelve weeks holiday each year, which despite protestations to the contrary, most teachers in my experience spend having actual holidays. The number of teachers at school this week to prepare for the new term next week will be very small.

Numerous comments also abound about how poorly respected teaching is as a profession, and that in itself is a roadblock to many bright young school leavers or university graduates training to become teachers.

Here’s a few suggestions to gain respect once again. Dress like a professional. I remember taking my then seven year old granddaughter to her school in Wellington one morning about 18 months ago. Her teachers were sloppily dressed in trackpants and sweatshirts. A week later I took my grandsons to school in London. The male teachers there wore a suit and tie, the women were neat and tidy in either a skirt and jacket or dress pants. Clothes maketh the man, or woman. If you dress appropriately, it’s amazing the way people regard you.

Don’t take “teacher only” days on the first scheduled day of a new term. That’s called taking the piss. Parents are very keen to get their children back to school after weeks at home. Teachers should show their enthusiasm for educating the nation’s youth by being ready to teach on the first day.

Don’t go on strike. My father, someone whose attitudes would be regarded as pre-historic in this age, always used to maintain that it was “unprofessional” for teachers to down tools. That tactic, he maintained, was for wharfies and freezing workers.

Be prepared to let the cream of teaching talent rise to the top and reward them appropriately. There is absolutely no excuse for those who are good at their job not to be paid accordingly. It happens in virtually every other job. Teaching is a highly protected career from which it is almost impossible to be fired for anything other than (very) bad behaviour. Even in my young days at the old NZBC you only progressed up the salary scale if you reached a certain standard of proficiency in your job. There has always been little to stop annual automatic salary progression in teaching, but to then make an executive level salary you have to become a principal. Why can’t the great classroom performers, those who truly inspire their young charges be rewarded for that skill?

(And don’t tell me it’s impossible to recognise the good performers without management bias. We could always do it in the broadcasting industry.)

So Minister Stanford, here’s my summary for you.

Train them at training colleges and in classrooms, not in university lecture theatres. Reduce the number of institutions offering teacher training.

Pay them to train but bond them to stay in the job for as long as their training.

Make the profession merit based whereby the best get paid the most, like in most other industries.

Gain respect by not going on strike, not taking “teacher only” days before or after holidays and dressing appropriately.

There you go Erica. The advice was free.

Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Subscribe to Peter William's Substack here

Comment on this article at https://x.com/BrashHide539