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a classroom blackboard with the chalk outline of a teacher teaching
Image: Archi Banal

PoliticsJuly 5, 2023

A stark warning from Auckland primary school principals

a classroom blackboard with the chalk outline of a teacher teaching
Image: Archi Banal

A shortage of teaching staff means classes are being routinely split. And it is only getting worse, according to a new survey.

Auckland primary schools are confronting an acute shortage of teaching staff, driven by departures from the region and the profession, combined with a paucity of recruitment options. That’s the resounding message from a new survey by the Auckland Primary Principals’ Association, which finds that 71% of Auckland principals consider teacher supply worse than at the same point last year, with most – 43% of all respondents – saying it is “significantly worse”. 

Principals seeking to staff their schools confronted a “high rate of attrition with a shallow pool of people coming in”, said APPA president Kyle Brewerton. “Run that scenario for another 12 months and where are we going to end up?”

Primary pupils were routinely arriving at school to find that the absence of reliever teachers meant they were broken off from classmates and reallocated around the school. “Close to half our classes are being split weekly, if not daily,” he said. That added to the burden of teachers and children who had already “felt the impact of three years of Covid disruption”, but was especially jarring for neurodiverse students.

The survey, which has a 78% response rate across the Auckland region, recorded 698 teacher departures in the first half of the year. Of those, just 127 were moving from one full-time teaching job to another within Auckland. 

Retention was a “growing concern”, the survey report concluded, “with teachers expressing a desire for better work-life balance, job satisfaction, and opportunities for career advancement. Attractiveness of overseas opportunities, challenges in recruitment and retention, workload, pay, and conditions are identified as factors contributing to teacher attrition.” 


When it comes to filling the vacancies created by what Brewerton called a “stunning number” of departures, principals report slim pickings. More than a quarter of advertised roles attracted zero applicants that were considered suitable and worthy of interview. In a further 37% of cases there was just one suitable applicant. 

The survey found that potential applicants were deterred by “high living costs in certain areas, distance from schools, and teachers' preference for part-time or reliever positions”. 

The sentiment from principals who responded to the survey spanned a “mix of positive feelings towards the job, concerns about its sustainability, and an interest in exploring other options or retirement. Respondents express a love for their job but feel overwhelmed, burned out, and unable to sustain the workload and demands … They mention factors such as long working hours, high pressure, lack of support, challenges in managing crises, and the impact on their well-being and personal life.”

APPA called on the Ministry of Education to “prioritise attracting and retaining quality candidates by offering competitive salaries, improving working conditions, and recognising the value of teachers”. 

Four weeks ago a national “crisis summit” was convened to address a survey of primary principals which found that almost a third are considering leaving the profession within two years, while almost a half of those who had become a principal within the last two years saying they intended to leave the role within five years. Just four of the 629 principals who responded to the NZEI Te Riu Roa survey said they had all the staffing and resourcing that they needed to meet the needs of their school or kura.  

After principals presented their concerns to the minister of education, Jan Tinetti, and ministry officials, the message back was that they understood the situation was “tight”, said Brewerton – but that understated the reality. “It’s not ‘tight’, we simply don’t have the people,” said Brewerton. “That’s not a tight market, that’s a broken market.”

Successive battles over pay and conditions had left the sector deflated, said Brewerton. It was a struggle to “get people inspired and excited” about the vocation. “The bigger picture is you’ve got a profession that has lost its glow.” 

Brewerton said the sector in Auckland is “running into some pretty dire months ahead” and that he is concerned those outside the city don’t grasp the seriousness of the issue; that there is a “shrugging of shoulders”. The perception, he said, was of a “lack of appreciation around the Auckland context … unless you’re living and working here I don’t think many people truly appreciate the difficulties.”

Jan Tinetti, the minister for education, said she acknowledged “that regional differences in staffing primary schools exist and that some regions have different supply pressures and more difficulty than others attracting and retaining staff.” She added, in an email: “Teachers choose where they are located and there are a range of initiatives available to support both teachers and schools to attract and retain teaching staff.” 

Tinetti pointed to Ministry of Education data from May 2023 that shows retention for primary school teachers at 88.9% in Auckland compared with 88% in 2019 and said: “The government has committed to investing $69 million to further support a range of supply initiatives.” Those included subsidising the Teacher Education Refresh programme that seeks to attract former teachers back to schools, support for recruitment overseas, and a recent collective agreement for primary teachers that boosted salaries by an average of 11%. Last week principals accepted a collective offer from the ministry at the third attempt.

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Toby Manhire
— Editor-at-large
Parking meters and the Beehive
Fine changes have been, err, parked (Image: Archi Banal)

PoliticsJuly 5, 2023

Parking fines review stalled due to cost of living crisis

Parking meters and the Beehive
Fine changes have been, err, parked (Image: Archi Banal)

Despite the transport ministry’s recommendation, the government has confirmed a plan to make parking fines more of a deterrent has been put on blocks. Stewart Sowman-Lund reports.

The government has stopped work on a planned overhaul of parking offences due to the ongoing cost of living crisis, a move that has upset Auckland’s mayor. The news follows reports this week that a potential congestion charge has also been put on hold.

Documents obtained by The Spinoff showed Ministry of Transport officials spent two years drafting up a suggested overhaul of parking regulations and penalties. They concluded the system was no longer working as it should and parking fines weren’t high enough to be a proper deterrent for drivers – it’s been 24 years since penalties were last updated, and inflation has soared over that period.

Auckland mayor Wayne Brown has been vocal about his desire to see parking fines increased and said it was ridiculous that the government was in charge of setting penalties. He wanted a law change that would give councils more power. “Parking fines are too low, but the real shocker is that they’re actually set by Wellington,” he told The Spinoff. Last month, Brown said on RNZ that drivers should be slapped with $100 fees for carpark overstaying, as opposed to the current $12, and it didn’t make sense that smaller areas like Gore had the same fines as cities like Auckland. 

While the government had been working to update those rules, it can now be revealed it’s not going to happen any time soon.

In April this year, transport ministry officials contacted the associate transport minister Kiri Allan with the latest set of proposals. In a briefing obtained by The Spinoff under the Official Information Act, it was recommended that Allan should bring a suggested package of proposed changes to cabinet on May 17. “Consultation will provide us with the opportunity to better understand the impacts of the current regulatory status, as well as the potential impacts that the proposed changes could have on particular groups,” officials told the minister.

However, Allan chose not to do this, opting to instead open consultation only on technical updates to road rules. That meant the package of proposed changes prepared by the Ministry of Transport hasn’t yet made it any further than the minister’s desk. 

(Image: Supplied)

A spokesperson for the government confirmed to The Spinoff that work on the review had now been halted. “The Ministry of Transport has started a review of parking offences and penalties. This review is currently on hold as the government’s focus is on addressing the cost of living and responding to recent severe weather events,” they said.

“Increasing infringement fees is not something the government is considering right now. This is not the time to impose additional costs on people when they are dealing with cost of living pressures.”

Officials had warned the government that choosing not to do anything about parking penalties could have consequences. “De-prioritisation or termination of this work could exacerbate existing pressure on the integrity of the parking system,” they wrote. “For example, with fewer and fewer people opting to pay for their parking, the ability of the system to fairly and efficiently allocate scarce parking resources will continue to be undermined.”

This could in turn lead to worsening outcomes for “safety, equitable access, economic prosperity, environmental sustainability, and overall efficiency of the transport system”. 

On the flipside, officials said there were risks associated with increasing penalties. These included a potential uptick in verbal abuse against parking wardens and more people launching time-consuming appeals against their fines.

A street lined with parking machines.
(Image: Tina Tiller)

In May, after Allan had already paused the plan, then-transport minister Michael Wood told The Spinoff the government was still aiming to update penalties and gave no indication work had been put on hold. “[The Ministry of Transport] are expecting to progress some work regarding the various parking offences and penalties later in 2023 or earlier in 2024.” In the meantime, Wood said ministry officials were working on a more minor review of parking regulation – but “the maximum fines for parking offences are not being included in this tranche of updates”.

Brown told The Spinoff there needed to be “less Wellington, more Auckland” when it came to his council’s ability to set parking fines. “It’s unfortunate this issue is one that seems to have been parked.”

While details of just how much the proposed new penalties would be were included in documents provided to the minister, they were fully redacted in copies released to The Spinoff.

Plans to introduce congestion charging in main centres have also stalled, with RNZ reporting on Tuesday that the government wanted to get cross-party support before introducing any legislation. National won’t commit to any plan while Auckland’s regional fuel tax remains in place. “The National Party has always been very clear that congestion charging can’t be an additional charge on motorists, it needs to be part of wider transport funding reform. So, while we’re fully committed to transport funding, Labour’s bill didn’t do that,” the party’s transport spokesperson Simeon Brown said.

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Gabi Lardies
— Staff writer