Everyone in our community should be deeply concerned when there is a shortage of employable teachers in our schools because it means the overall quality of the work force is lowered.
All parents want their children to be in a classroom with a highly professional, engaging and knowledgeable, kind and relatable teacher all day every day. We all know this isn't the case for every child currently in our system, especially in schools in our most disadvantaged areas. Even if you don't have children or mokopuna in the state education system right now, you will be working with or employing young people in the future and we all need our future citizens to be engaged life-long learners.
The problem with shortage of supply is that we put at risk the quality of instruction available to our young people because there is no competition for jobs in some areas. Principals are scrambling to ensure there are trained teachers in front of students to take care of baseline priorities, while experienced staff must support partially-trained and less-experienced teachers who have been employed, often on a fixed term basis.
Successive governments have created this problem through systematically ignoring it over the past 20 years and filling the gaps by "importing" teachers internationally. The number of people enrolling in initial teacher education training programmes since 2010 has dropped by 40 per cent, while the population has diversified and increased.
The reality is, a female-dominated profession has been disregarded and under-valued and yet, as a society, the value we place on educating our young people should be regarded as a top priority.