The Staffing Situation in New Zealand Schools at the Start of the 2009 School Year

Entitlement Staffing Vacancies

In this survey the term ‘entitlement staffing vacancy’ is defined as any position which is not filled by a permanent teacher or by a long-term reliever with tenure of more than 10 consecutive weeks, as at the beginning of the new school year.

How many schools had vacancies on the first day of school in 2009?

A small proportion of all schools (11.6%) had vacant entitlement positions at the beginning of 2009 (see Table 3). The proportion of primary schools with entitlement vacancies increased remained at the same level as 2008 (8.5%), but decreased for secondary schools (from 32.8% to 27.3%).

How many vacancies were there on the first day of school in 2009?

In 2009, there were 329.5 Full-Time Teacher Equivalent (FTTE) vacancies across all schools. This represented less than one percent (0.8%) of all FTTE entitlement positions in those schools. The proportion of vacancies to all entitlement positions has dropped from the previous four years (0.9% for 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008).

This drop was mainly due to the decrease in the proportion of vacancies in the secondary sector, where the proportion of vacancies dropped from 1.1 percent in 2008 to 0.8 percent. The proportion of vacancies in the primary sector has remained the same as the previous year (0.7%).

Were there any entitlement staffing positions where an appointment had been made but the appointee was unable to start work at the beginning of Term 1?

At the beginning of 2009, six primary schools (with a total of 6.0 FTTE vacancies), and nineteen secondary schools (with a total of 19.0 FTTE vacancies) had made appointments but the teachers were unable to start teaching at the beginning of the 2009 school year.

Re-advertised Vacancies

As in previous surveys, the 2009 survey defined a ‘re-advertised position’ as any position which had been advertised nationally more than once with no appointment being made after the first time advertised. Re-advertising is considered an indication that the position is hard to staff.

What proportion of entitlement positions were vacancies that had been re-advertised?

Table 4 indicates that at the beginning of 2009, 0.3 percent of all entitlement positions were vacancies that had been re-advertised. This overall percentage has decreased from 2008 (from 0.5% to 0.3% in 2009). The proportion of re-advertised vacancies remained the same for primary schools (at 0.3%), but decreased for secondary schools (from 0.7% to 0.4% in 2009).

What proportion of all vacancies had been re-advertised?

Forty-three percent of entitlement positions vacant at the beginning of the school year had been re-advertised. This was a substantial decrease from 2008, where re-advertised vacancies represented 51 percent of all teaching vacancies. Forty-one percent of the primary vacancies (similar to 2008), and 45.3 percent of the secondary vacancies had been re-advertised (a decrease of 14.7 percentage points from 2008).

Characteristics of Schools with Vacancies and Re-advertised Vacancies

Table 5 provides a breakdown of the schools that had vacancies and re-advertised vacancies at the beginning of the 2009 school year by locality (rural and urban), decile and concentration of Māori students. In previous years, vacancies and re-advertised positions, as a proportion of all entitlement positions, were greatest in schools in rural areas (population <1,000), in schools with a higher proportion of Māori students on their roll, and in low decile schools (deciles 1-3). Data for 2009 shows a similar pattern.

Geographical Location of Schools with Vacancies and Re-advertised Vacancies

In order to determine whether schools in particular regions of New Zealand experience more or less difficulty in employing staff than those in other regions, the geographical location of schools with vacancies and re-advertised vacancies in 2009 was compared to 2008. Table 6 provides details of vacancies and re-advertised vacancies for 2008 and 2009 in each of the Ministry of Education local office areas.

In 2009, the Wellington local office area recorded the highest proportion of vacancies (1.2%) of all entitlement positions (above the national average of 0.8%), and Whangarei and Hamilton areas experienced the highest proportion of re-advertised positions (0.6%; above the national average of 0.3%). Apart from the Hamilton, Napier, and Nelson local office areas, all other local office areas either remained the same or experienced a decrease in the proportion of vacancies from 2008.

Subject Vacancies

For the first time in 2009, primary schools were asked if any of their vacancies were for Māori Medium/bilingual or Samoan bilingual teachers. There were no vacancies for Samoan bilingual teachers, but there were 14.6 FTTEs Māori Medium/bilingual vacancies. This represented a small percentage of all the primary vacancies (8.1%).

In the secondary schools survey, schools were asked about the subject areas in which vacancies occurred, to establish whether there was a concentration of vacancies in particular subject areas (refer to Table 7). The highest proportion of vacancies occurred in English. At the beginning of 2009, there were 17.5 FTTE vacancies in English representing 17.5 percent of all vacancies in secondary schools. English vacancies have increased from 23.9 FTTEs in 2008 to 26.1 FTTEs in 2009 (from 11.9% to 17.5% of all secondary vacancies).

The second highest proportion of vacancies was in Technology, where there were 21.4 FTTE vacancies (14.4% of all secondary vacancies), however the number of technology vacancies have decreased when compared to 2008 (34.3 FTTE vacancies, 17.1% of all secondary vacancies in 2008).

Another subject that experienced a fairly large decrease was Mathematics & Statistics (from 16.8% to 10.2%). Subjects that had significant increases in the proportion of vacancies were in Te Reo Māori (from 5.3% to 8.2%), and general sciences (from 5.1% to 8.3%).