Government invests to bolster teacher supply
The Government is investing in new pathways for teachers to study - to bolster our education workforce and ensure the country has the teachers it needs for the future.
The Government’s new package allows for more employment-based education, as well as partnering with iwi to design and pilot new regional scholarships.
The teacher supply Budget package boosts efforts to ‘grow our own’ teachers, by offering flexible options for Kiwis to study, on top of existing initiatives that support qualified teachers to re-enter the profession or return from overseas.
Students in low decile schools will benefit from an expansion of the Teach First NZ programme, which enables top graduates to teach while studying and a new employment-based initiative from 2021.
In addition to initiatives to increase short-to-medium term teacher supply, the Government is also looking well ahead to what will be needed in our education workforce of the future – through the development of an Education Workforce Strategy.
The vision for this strategy is also being shared today and can be found at the link below. This overarching Education Workforce Strategy will be complemented by a workforce strategy for Māori Medium education. https://conversation.education.govt.nz/conversations/education-workforce-strategy/(external link)
Other measures in the 2019 Budget package include:
- Funding support for teacher education providers to meet new and strengthened Teaching Council requirements. These include increasing the length of student placements in schools, and are expected to lead to better preparation of graduating teachers.
- Another 400 National Beginning Teacher Grants of $10,000 over the next four years for schools to cover mentoring or other costs when employing teaching graduates.
- Another 400 placements in the Voluntary Bonding Scheme expansion, which encourages new teaching graduates to work in areas and subjects of high need, such as in Auckland low decile schools, or to teach te reo Māori, maths or science.
- Increased investment in the TeachNZ Scholarship programme.
- Funding to continue to attract overseas teachers to meet immediate needs.
We will also continue with the following previously funded initiatives of:
- Auckland Beginner Teacher Grant (ABT) until 2020.
- Recruitment, Retention, and Responsibility National Fund (3RNF) until 2020.
- Teacher Education Refresh (TER) until 2022.
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