Summary

The Ministry’s Teacher Demand and Supply Planning Tool (‘the Tool’) is constructed to forecast the number of teachers required by schools in the future, and to compare this with an estimate of how many teachers are projected to be employed by schools in the future.  This is the third annual release of teacher demand and supply projections using the Tool.

The Summary Report contains the results from the Tool. A Technical Appendix providing a more complete guide to the methodology applied within the Tool is available alongside this report.

Key Findings

• Covid-19 has increased the complexity in modelling of the outlook for teacher demand and supply in New Zealand. These projections are underpinned by assumptions based on trend information for key inputs (such as student numbers and teacher retention rates) and explicit modelling of the anticipated impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on these inputs in future.
• The demand for secondary teachers is projected to grow year-on-year out to 2025.  In contrast, the demand for primary teachers is projected to grow marginally in 2021, before dropping year-on-year in the longer term.
• In both sectors, over the next few years we are anticipating even higher teacher retention, growth in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) graduate numbers due to increased enrolments, and – in particular in 2021 – a growth in the number of former teachers interested in returning to the workforce, partly driven by qualified teachers returning to live in New Zealand since the global outbreak of Covid-19.
• For the secondary sector, we are projecting that supply will rise broadly in line with demand, leaving an estimated shortfall of 80 teachers in 2021, 30 teachers in 2022, and rising again to 100 teachers in 2023. We anticipate there will still be an ongoing need to grow the supply of secondary teachers to support schools in finding the teachers they need, especially in hard to staff subjects such as te reo Māori and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), in certain parts of the country and in the Māori medium sector.
• For the primary sector, the modelling provides confidence that demand will be met by the available supply in 2021 and out to 2023. However, beneath this national outlook, we anticipate there will still be an ongoing need to help primary schools find teachers in certain parts of the country and in the Māori medium sector.