Editorial: Fast track to classrooms could relieve the teacher shortage

Teach First trainee Teresa Tolua started teaching three English classes at Massey High School after only nine weeks of intensive training. Photo / Michael Craig

It is common to hear people in all lines of work say they did not really learn their job until they started to do it. While that statement might not be strictly true, there is a lot of truth in it. The study of journalism is quite different from doing it and people trained in engineering, law, social work or teaching say the same. So at a time of a teacher shortage, it is good that the Government is open to the idea of allowing secondary teachers to train on the job.

To qualify for secondary teaching, a person must get a degree in the subject to be taught, then spend a year at a teacher training institution. That additional year of unpaid study is said to discourage some potential applicants for the work. They may have spent five years studying for an advanced degree in their subject and the prospect of yet another year may be just too much, especially if the course is largely educational theory.

There is probably no subject more dull — and more disconnected from the reality of a classroom. That is what some teachers say, anyway. Training colleges have long recognised the worth of practical experience by sending trainees into schools periodically during their course. Now the Secondary Principals Association has proposed that graduates be given the option of going straight into classrooms and Education Minister Chris Hipkins sounds interested.

Graduates would be brave to take it on. They will need good guidance and supervision before they faced a classroom of adolescents. The skills required to interest and motivate many of them will be different from those that work well enough at a university. But there are probably few rules that work for all school teachers in any case. Their success will depend on their personal qualities and the respect they can command in a classroom.

It is also often said that a job such as teaching is a vocation. Successful secondary teachers need more than a good knowledge of their subject, they need to want to give it to others, especially to young minds that might be as excited by the subject as the teacher was and should still be. When a pupil is captivated by the subject there is probably no more rewarding job in the world than teaching.

And we certainly need more teachers, and probably more excited teachers, of the sciences, mathematics and other subjects in which New Zealand pupils are slipping down international performance rankings. Secondary schools are facing a severe and worsening teacher shortage now and in the years ahead and the numbers starting teacher training courses declined by 40 per cent from 2012 to 2016.

The year-long courses are not the only discouraging factor. Teachers pay is not enticing when it is compared to other professional and business careers the graduates can attempt. Teaching remains a heavily unionised occupation concentrating on basic scale pay increases for all rather than incentives for performance or to fill shortages in certain areas. Then there is the cost of housing in Auckland and some other centres.

Probably most damaging, teaching does not have the status it deserves in western countries, perhaps because teachers' unions are so often in political battles with those elected to govern.

But the training course is probably one of the considerations putting people off. If they have a faster track to a paid job, more graduates might try their hand at teaching and find they love it.