There is growing concern amongst secondary teachers with respect to the number of over-large classes they are being asked to teach. Teachers in schools with student rolls over 1500 most frequently express this concern, but it is not confined to those schools.

Recommendations to Government

1. That the remaining recommendations of the 2000 School Staffing Review Group, specifically recommendation 3.6, are fully implemented.
   • The Review Group recommends a longer term goal for the Government should be to further adjust the primary and secondary staffing ratios in New Zealand schools beyond those recommended in sections 3.1 and 3.3 of this report. ...  In the secondary sector we recommend further improvement to base management of 1.0 FTTE per school and further improvement to curriculum staffing by reducing each of the year level curriculum staffing divisors by two. For example, the years 8 and 9 curriculum staffing ratios would be changed from 1:25 to 1:23. (See Report of the School Staffing Review Group also accessible via the web resources downloads)
2. That the implementation of SRG 3.6 begin in 2009 and be phased in over no more than 5 years.
3. There be a review of, and changes to the staffing formula to recognise the development of very large schools.
4. There be a moratorium on secondary teacher redeployments until the recommendations of the SRG are fully implemented.
5. That there be enforceable limits placed on schools to ensure that classes do not exceed 25 students in general classes and 18 in practical classes.
6. That there is a genuine consideration of the demands of individualised learning and the workload pressures associated with NCEA in the review of the staffing delivery formula.
7. That the additional staffing resources required by any new policy initiative are identified through consultation with the secondary sector prior to and provided before any implementation of such new initiatives.

Current issues

The problem arises partly from the current staffing formula, developed before there were very large schools, combined with pressure to individualise learning at the senior part of the secondary school (which drives up class sizes in core junior classes) and pressure on schools to offer broad curriculum options in order to compete for students. It is exacerbated by a string of policy requirements or initiatives that have been imposed on schools but have not received additional staffing to implement. Each initiative, large or small, requires staffing hours and these are inevitably drawn from the curriculum staffing time available to a school, reducing the overall number of classes and driving up class sizes elsewhere.

Teacher concerns relate both to the high workload generated by large classes and the inadequate education environment that is part and parcel of large classes. The health and safety implications of large classes are frequently highlighted and the absurdity of a policy of individualised learning set against the practical reality of having 30 or more students in a class makes a mockery of the policy.

Student disengagement with education does not begin with the senior years. Some students begin the process of disengagement in the junior secondary school years and this disengagement is harder to combat when at-risk students are part of a large group. Individualising learning requires a teacher to know their students and to be able to spend quality time with each student they have. It is a matter of getting the caseload right.

The pastoral and guidance demands on schools have risen with the introduction of NCEA and proposals to ensure that all students are engaged in education or training to the age of 18 will place greater demands on the pastoral and guidance and careers support network in schools. This will add further pressure on staffing in secondary schools that will not be met by the adjustment in curriculum staffing which slightly higher retention will generate. Failure to address under-staffing in schools will undermine future initiatives.

Schools have been forced to try to compensate for inadequate entitlement staffing allocations by hiring additional teachers – around 10% of the secondary teaching force is funded directly by boards. Some schools have more than 6 teachers they fund from operations grant in order to meet the basic timetable and pastoral demands in their schools. This equates to more than $500,000 per year. The high level of board-funded staffing in the system contributes to the operations grant pressures in the secondary sector.

The School Staffing Review Group (SRG) recognised many of the problems in 2000 and recommended that once the first 10 steps of its staffing proposals were in place the next phase should be to implement its recommendation (3.6) which sought to address class size by lowering the curriculum staffing dividers by 2 at each level and adding additional management and pastoral staffing to schools. In 2005 the Labour-led Government committed itself to implementing all of the recommendations of the report, but failed to do so.