Summary

This report provides the latest results from the Ministry’s Teacher Demand and Supply Planning Tool (‘the Tool’) for the Auckland region. The Tool is constructed to forecast the number of teachers required by schools in future, and to compare this with an estimate of how many teachers are projected to be employed by schools in future. This is the second release of Auckland teacher demand and supply projections using the Tool, since the inaugural release in October 2018.

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 the previously released national projections: TDS 2020 results.

Key findings

• Covid-19 has increased the complexity in modelling of the outlook for teacher demand and supply in Auckland. These projections are underpinned by assumptions based on trend information for key inputs (such as student numbers and teacher retention rates in Auckland) and explicit modelling of anticipated impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on these inputs in future.
• The Auckland teacher demand and supply outlook is broadly similar to our national results published in November 2020, under the assumption of no further Auckland-specific Covid-19 restrictions and economic impacts.
• The demand for secondary teachers in Auckland is projected to grow year-on-year out to 2025.  In contrast, the demand for primary teachers in Auckland is projected to decrease year-on-year out to 2026.
• 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 Auckland secondary sector, we are projecting that supply will rise broadly in line with demand, leaving an estimated shortfall of 30 teachers in 2021, 20 teachers in 2022, and rising again to 60 teachers in 2023. We anticipate there will still be an ongoing requirement to grow the supply of secondary teachers to support Auckland schools in finding the teachers they need. This is especially the case in hard-to-staff subjects such as te reo Māori and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), in the Māori medium sector, and to find teachers for certain schools within the region.
• For the Auckland primary sector, the modelling provides confidence that demand will be met by the available supply in 2021 and out to 2023. However, beneath this high-level outlook for the Auckland region, we anticipate there will still be an ongoing need to help primary schools in the Māori medium sector find teachers, and to support certain individual schools where required.