The Education Ministry should look at school staffing shortages as a nationwide problem rather than schools having to deal them it themselves, Orewa College principal Wiri Warriner said. File picture. Photo: UnSplash/ Taylor Flowe
An Auckland school principal who is having to find up to 20 relief teachers a day says the shortage is putting too much pressure on staff and students and it is only going to get worse, unless there is a nationwide solution found.
Orewa College on the Hibiscus Coast emailed parents last week warning them that some students may have to be rostered home to study if it could not find enough relievers to plug staff shortages.
It has managed to narrowly avoid that but is still facing the daily challenge of finding relievers.
It is the same for other schools too and in June the New Zealand Relief Teachers' Association told Checkpoint demand was outstripping supply.
Orewa College principal Wiri Warriner told Checkpoint the shortage meant the rest of his staff were under pressure to do even more and the college was currently advertising for staff in 2025 and had eight vacancies.
"We've looked at other avenues of how we can still keep things functioning for teaching and learning. We've looked at combining classes, multiple classes in libraries and halls," he said.
"Year 13's have been unsupervised at times, but which is quite frustrating because it's the crunch time of the years and then we've had to resort to the goodwill of teachers utilising some of their entitled times in non-contact time to give up for relief as well."
Warriner said from a staff perspective, the pressure put on staff was one of the biggest frustrations for the workforce.
"In terms of maintaining strong well-being for our staff, I think that's probably the pivotal point for us in terms of supporting them," he said.
"No one likes to be given additional duties of teaching, if you've dedicated that time to planning and moderation in marking, especially at this time of the year, it's setting a lot of frustration and for our own staff, which, if our staff are frustrated, it can kind of lead on to other things in terms of the enjoyment of the work area."
He said he was worried about what the state of the shortages in the workforce would be five years from now.
"A large portion of our workforce are leaning on towards retiring and what does that look like considering the number of teachers that are coming from university and New Zealand teachers especially."
It would be good to look at other provisions, especially at ministry level, so other avenues could be explored, he said.
"We've actually had a couple of emails that have come through from people from the community saying how they could they help," he said.
"Obviously they're not certified, but they've got the skill sets to do something from a reliever point of view, so other provisions may be needed to be looked at if we're looking five years down the track from now."
Warriner said he would like the ministry to look at the shortages as a nationwide problem rather than schools having to deal them it themselves.
"It's definitely a trend amongst other schools where there's a strong demand or pressure internally for teachers to be doing what we call internal relief weekend above their entitlement," he said.
"I think we just need to look at other provisions so we can support our teachers that are in these schools, so it's not putting so much pressure on the system, but also not on our students as well."
The school had to plan with a pool of teachers to make sure they had relievers on call each day, he said.
"We tend to call on anywhere up to 10 to 20 relievers a day and I think we try to roster in at least five relievers a week, but any other day if sickness or dependency where teachers need to be at home with their kids who are sick, it can be at times uncertain of what the day could look like," he said.
"I think that's where the provision of internal cover is utilised from a goodwill perspective from teachers, and I don't think it's necessarily always sustainable."
The school has also asked some relievers who used to teach at the school to potentially come back to teach classes that were hard to staff, he said.
"We're kind of relying on some of our relievers to work a long-term arrangement, just to support us through some of the harder kind of staffing areas of the school."
