Introduction

• As a global study, TALIS 2024 surveyed around 280,000 teachers and 5,600 principals in over 50 countries and education systems.
• In New Zealand, 2,733 teachers across Years 1-10 and 227 principals took part in TALIS in mid-2024. State, state integrated and independent schools were all included across contributing, full primary, intermediate, composite and secondary schools.
• Trend comparisons in New Zealand can only be made for Year 7-10 teachers and principals. Year 1-6 teachers and principals were included for the first time in 2024.
• New Zealand struggled to reach the OECD’s participation targets with 51% of the Year 7-10 sample of schools and 58% of the Year 1-6 sample taking part. Analysis for bias indicated that, although the final sample was smaller than ideal, it was representative of schools across different categories such as school types, socioeconomic factors and regions.

Key findings

A profile of teachers in TALIS

• New Zealand had one of the highest rates of active teachers who had at least 10 years of work experience outside education, indicating the importance of supporting people to transition into the profession later in their careers. Nearly two thirds of Year 1-10 teachers in New Zealand agreed that teaching was their first choice as a career. On average, New Zealand teachers at both primary and secondary have 16 years of teaching experience.
• The average age of Year 7-10 teachers in New Zealand is 45, no statistically significant difference from TALIS 2018, and women remain the majority in the profession: 65% of Year 7-10 teachers and 90% of Year 1-6 teachers are women.
• New Zealand’s full-time Year 7-10 teachers worked an average of 48 hours per week, which was no different from TALIS 2018. Year 1-6 full-time teachers in New Zealand averaged 51 hours per week. Both were among the highest hours internationally.
• Across both primary and secondary, New Zealand teachers estimated they spent about two fifths (40-44%) of their working time on teaching.

Teacher practices

• New Zealand Year 7-10 teachers were more likely than the OECD average to explain what they expected students to learn (96% New Zealand, 91% OECD), but less likely to explain how new and old topics are related (80% versus 87%) or to present a summary of recently learned content (75% versus 80%).
• New Zealand Year 7-10 teachers tended to be above the OECD average for having students carry out practices that supported knowledge consolidation, such as selecting tasks that gradually increase in difficulty (88% New Zealand, 80% OECD).
• New Zealand Year 7-10 teachers were also more likely than the OECD average to use assessment practices that involved giving feedback directly to students, such as providing oral or written feedback (89% New Zealand, 78% OECD).
• New Zealand Year 7-10 teachers were confident that they could help students think critically and craft good questions for students, and a higher proportion in 2024 than TALIS 2018 reported giving tasks that required students to think critically (78% in 2024, 69% 2018).
• New Zealand Year 7-10 teachers tended to use adaptive teaching practices at a higher rate than the OECD average, such as asking questions at various difficulty levels to check students’ understanding (89% New Zealand, 84% OECD).
• Teachers in 2024 (in New Zealand and across the OECD) were more likely to use classroom management practices than in 2018, for example telling students to listen (64% in 2024, 57% 2018).

Technology and teaching

• Most New Zealand Year 1-10 teachers felt their initial teacher education had not prepared them well for using digital tools for teaching (76% saying not at all or to some extent). Teachers with up to 10 years of experience were more likely to say they felt prepared than their more experienced colleagues, but still only a third said they were prepared quite a bit or a lot by their ITE.
• New Zealand secondary teachers (Years 9-10) had taken part in PLD for using digital resources and tools in teaching, and using artificial intelligence (AI), at a higher rate than New Zealand Year 1-8 teachers (for AI: 55% secondary teachers, 36% primary teachers).
• New Zealand secondary teachers (Years 9-10) reported a higher level of need for PLD in using AI for teaching and learning than their primary colleagues (63% versus 53%), but both groups were similar on level of need for PLD for digital resources and tools.
• Compared with lower secondary teachers across the OECD, New Zealand Year 9-10 teachers were more likely to use digital resources and tools for a wide range of tasks, but less likely to download lesson plans from the internet.
• Over two thirds (69%) of New Zealand Year 7-10 teachers had used AI compared with about a third (36%) of lower secondary teachers across the OECD.
• Where New Zealand Year 1-10 teachers said they had used AI in their work, they were most likely to have used it for generating lesson plans (78%) or to learn about and summarise a topic (73%). They were least likely to have used it to review data on student performance (10%) or to assess students’ work (12%).

Teachers’ expertise

• In New Zealand and across the OECD, there was an overall decrease between TALIS 2018 and 2024 in the proportion of recent graduates who reported that their formal education had prepared them for subject content, subject pedagogy, general pedagogy, and classroom practice.
• Compared to the OECD average, New Zealand Year 7-10 teachers with 5 or fewer years of experience were less likely to report that their initial teacher education had made them feel prepared for all aspects of teaching, except for teaching in a multicultural or multilingual setting. They were the least likely, internationally, to report feeling prepared for the content of the subject(s) they teach (37% New Zealand, 73% OECD). The patterns were similar for Year 1-6 teachers.
• New Zealand had among the highest rates of both formal (77%) and informal (81%) induction when comparing lower secondary across the OECD, and about half of New Zealand teachers in their first 5 years of teaching reported having an assigned mentor.
• Compared to 2018, New Zealand Year 7-10 teachers in 2024 were more likely to have participated in PLD in several areas, most notably teaching students with learning support needs (68% 2024, from 32% 2018), knowledge of the curriculum (to 85% from 66%), and teaching in a multicultural or multilingual setting (to 62% from 46%).
• Compared to 2018, New Zealand Year 7-10 teachers were more likely to report that they had a lack of time due to commitments or other responsibilities (72% 2024 from 31% 2018), that cost was a barrier (to 57% from 44%), and that the PLD conflicted with their work schedule (to 66% from 56%). However, a lower proportion of teachers reported that a lack of relevant PLD was a barrier in 2024 (25% in 2024, 35% in 2018).

Demands of teaching

• 6 out of 10 New Zealand teachers experience stress in their work quite a bit or a lot, and only a third reported no physical health impacts from their work. About 4 in 5 New Zealand teachers indicated that their mental health was affected by their job at least to some extent.
• Internationally, the proportion of New Zealand Year 7-10 teachers who reported experiencing stress in their work a lot (33%) was among the highest across TALIS countries, similar to 7 other systems including Australia and second only to Alberta, Canada. This had increased from 28% in TALIS 2018.
• A higher proportion of female Year 7-10 teachers (39%) in New Zealand report experiencing stress a lot in their work than their male colleagues (22%) and New Zealand Year 7-10 teachers from socioeconomically disadvantaged schools also experience stress at a higher rate (45%) than those in relatively more advantaged schools (28%).
• Change was a prominent stressor for New Zealand teachers, particularly for secondary (Year 9-10) teachers, e.g. 70% of secondary teachers reported that keeping up with changing requirements from local or national authorities was a source of stress quite a bit or a lot compared with 58% of Year 1-8 teachers.
• On a set of questions about whether teachers experienced too much change in their school, New Zealand Year 7-10 teachers were above the OECD average on all measures, for example wanting to see a period of stability before anything else is changed (56% New Zealand, 44% OECD).

Success in teaching

• Around 90% of New Zealand teachers reported that the extent to which they achieved teaching aims such as consolidating learning, cognitive activation and clarity of teaching was quite a bit or a lot but were less likely to report successful classroom management (Year 1-8 teachers 73%, Year 9-10 teachers 64%).
• Compared to the OECD average, New Zealand Year 7-10 teachers were higher on cognitive activation (89% versus 78%), consolidating learning (91% versus 84%), and adapting their teaching (79% versus 75%), but lower than the international average for classroom management (36% versus 44%).
• More teachers who were older or more experienced had high self-efficacy than their younger or less experienced colleagues (e.g., 33% of teachers with over 20 years of experience versus 16% of those with 5 or fewer), but there were no statistically significant differences by gender and educational attainment. Higher self-efficacy was associated with better wellbeing, and with higher reports of achieving teaching aims.
• New Zealand primary teachers (Years 1-8) tended to have higher self-efficacy than their secondary counterparts (Years 9-10) across classroom management, instruction, student engagement, and in reducing achievement gaps among students.
• Compared to the OECD average for lower secondary teachers, New Zealand Year 7-10 teachers were among the most likely to indicate that they believed that intelligence can be changed (92% versus 78%), indicating they hold a growth mindset regarding intelligence.

Teachers’ career intentions

• Staff shortages were the most pressing concern for New Zealand principals when asked about issues that could hinder their school’s ability to deliver quality instruction. Of New Zealand Year 7-10 teachers, 43% were in schools where the principal said this was an issue quite a bit or a lot, compared to the OECD average of 23%.
• Around 9 in 10 teachers were happy with their school and satisfied with their performance there. However, nearly half wondered if it would have been better to choose another profession, and 1 in 10 regretted becoming a teacher. About a third agreed the teaching profession is valued in society, no change since TALIS 2018.
• Most New Zealand teachers felt valued by students and their parents/guardians (over 70%), but only a small minority felt their views were valued by policymakers (14%). Around three quarters were satisfied with the terms of their contract, but only about half (51%) with their salary; however, Year 7-10 teachers’ satisfaction with their salary was higher than in 2018 (36%).
• A fifth of New Zealand Year 7-10 teachers under 30 wanted to leave teaching in the next 5 years, similar to the OECD average (21%) and no different from the proportion in 2018.
• Teachers were less likely to say they wanted to leave in the next 5 years when they had higher job satisfaction, enjoyed teaching more, and indicated the opportunity for teaching to have positive social impact was important to them.
• Teachers were more likely to say they wanted to leave in the next 5 years when they were experiencing more negative impacts on their wellbeing, a higher level of fatigue with change, and higher levels of workload stress.

School context

• Compared to the OECD average for lower secondary (New Zealand Years 7-10), a higher proportion of New Zealand teachers were in schools where:
  • More than 10% of students’ first language is different from the language of instruction (39% New Zealand, 25% OECD)
  • More than 10% of students have learning support needs (77% New Zealand, 46% OECD)
  • More than 10% of students are immigrants (37% New Zealand, 21% OECD).
• There was no statistically significant difference from the OECD average for the proportion of teachers in schools where:
  • More than 10% of students have difficulties understanding the language of instruction (25% New Zealand, 17% OECD)
  • More than 30% of students are from socioeconomically disadvantaged homes (22% New Zealand, 21% OECD)
  • At least 1% of students are refugees (40% New Zealand, 47% OECD)

Final note and next steps

TALIS provides valuable information about the experiences of New Zealand teachers in an international context, and the opportunity to see how these may – or may not – change over time. This initial report provides an overview of some of the findings; a later report in 2026 will focus on the school climate for teaching and learning, including professional relationships, teachers’ involvement with leadership and decision-making, and other aspects of the school environment such as student behaviour and school safety.

In 2024 TALIS also asked a question that allowed teachers to write, in their own words, a recommendation about a pressing issue in education. Analysis of these responses will be included in a later report that focuses on this qualitative data.

Similar to other large scale international studies, there are many opportunities in TALIS to further analyse the national and international data and incorporate different contextual information to provide insight for our system and contribute to policy and practice.