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A South Auckland primary school has spent $25,000 on recruitment consultants in just six months in a desperate search for good teachers.
Another primary has used money from parent donations to pay consultants, as schools find it increasingly hard to replace staff.
The Auckland Primary Principals Association has asked the Ministry of Education for help and is due this week to present findings of its latest teacher supply survey to officials.
Association president Owen Alexander said the results showed 92 per cent of the 150 schools to respond found getting experienced staff was either "very difficult" or "difficult".
"They are finding it is a very tight market."
A Government recruiting subsidy was available only to secondary schools.
TeachNZ manager Irene Lynch recognised the market was tight but said there were teachers out there.
She credited a ministry international recruiting campaign with helping to attract the more than 140 teachers from abroad who took up work in Auckland this year, of whom 57 were New Zealand-trained teachers returning home.
Ms Lynch said the reduced ratio of one teacher to 18 students in new entrant classes saw 273 more fulltime-equivalent primary teachers funded in Auckland this year.
But Linley Bruce, principal of Maungawhau School in Mt Eden, said lower ratios for new entrant classes had increased pressure and her school ended up using an agency to arrange fixed-term contracts for two positions.
"I have to sometimes recruit teachers at odd times because of 5-year-old roll growth," she said. "With the teacher shortage that's quite difficult because you can't just put anybody into those classes, you've really got to have good-quality people to teach your new entrants."
The South Auckland school that told the association it spent $25,000 on recruiting would not be named for fear it would make the problem worse.
Pakuranga Intermediate principal Stuart Myers said his school paid almost $12,000 of parent donations to an agency to permanently fill two vacancies this year.
Mr Myers said it was a big cost but the school was not satisfied with the quality of candidates who applied through the traditional avenues.
"It's been particularly difficult over the last couple of years," he said. "I'm a bit fussy and I would rather have, perhaps, a good person that has come out from England rather than someone who couldn't really speak English as well as you would like."
Ms Lynch said principals could do their own overseas recruiting and did not necessarily have to use agents.
