He Pānui Kōhungahunga - the Early Learning Bulletin - September 2019 Special Edition

ECE Teacher Supply Package

The Government has today announced new measures to help relieve teacher supply pressures in the short-medium term. This follows sector feedback about the shortage of teachers in Early Childhood Education (ECE).

A $4 million package of initiatives to attract people into ECE teaching, and to help recruit extra teachers from overseas, including a Relocation Support Grant (RSG), has been agreed for the 2019/20 year. To be eligible for these initiatives, applicants must be:

licensed early childhood services that are required to employ qualified teachers, or
qualified early childhood teachers from overseas, including New Zealand trained early childhood teachers returning to New Zealand, who have accepted employment in these services.

Increase to discretionary hours
Additionally, there is a temporary increase to the number of discretionary hours available to teacher-led centre-based services. This increase will extend discretionary hours from 40 to 60 hours per funding period, effective from 1 October 2019 until 31 May 2020. Discretionary hours are used to help maintain funding rates, where an appropriately qualified reliever cannot be found to cover certificated teacher absences.

Primary qualified certificated teachers as Person Responsible
The Ministry will also begin consulting on proposals to change the regulations, to allow a primary qualified certificated teacher to hold the role of Person Responsible in an early learning centre. This change would apply to designated hours, such as the beginning and the end of the day. We will be looking for your views on whether this change would be helpful, and whether it would enable you to make better use of the qualified and certificated staff you have already in your services.

You can find more information about the full package in the Factsheet on our teacher workforce page.

Growing our teacher workforce