When National was in power they increased teacher workload with national standards, while freezing pay. They also made tertiary education and teacher training harder to access. The result? A collapse in those training to be teachers:
The number of people training to be teachers dropped 40 per cent in six years, leaving a huge teacher shortage, the Government says.
A boomer-aged teachers prepare to retire, New Zealand is facing a "ticking time bomb" Education Minister Chris Hipkins said.
Figures released today showed the number of people training to be teachers dropped from 14,585 to 8895 - nearly 5700 students.
"The numbers are staggering," Hipkins said.
Early childhood education teacher trainees were down from 6760 to 3615, primary teacher trainees down from 5740 to 4065 and secondary teacher trainees were down from 1865 to 1120.
"In each case, the numbers were going in the opposite direction between 2008 and 2010."
And the result of that combined with retirements and inaccessible housing is that Auckland is expected to be short 3,000 teachers by 2027. There will no doubt be similar shortages in the rest of the country. Which is what happens when you under-invest, then leave others to carry the can.
Fixing this is going to be expensive. The PPTA will apparently be demanding a 14.5% pay rise this year, plus a housing allowance in expensive regions - and there's going to be increased costs to improve accessibility of tertiary education as well. And no doubt National will spend the next three years screaming that that's all "waste", and studiously ignoring the fact that its basicly been forced on the current government by their past penny-pinching. Just like they do with everything else.
