The Pigeonhole

Teaching is a profession in crisis, particularly in my area, Computing. The problem that we face is that as the technology and the skills we wish our young people to have, progress and change, we need teachers who can inspire, lead, and teach these skills. How do we attract teachers with these skills into the profession.

Parents would, I am sure, agree with me that computing skills will open doors and give access to lucrative jobs and opportunities for their children. We want our children prepared for the future, we want them inspired and enabled to use the new technologies that are available today or will be in their futures.

In computing we have a whole set of new areas for assessment for our fifteen year olds from Programming and Computer Science to Digital Infrastructure and Electronics. These new areas will spread to 16 and 17 year olds over the next two years. These are vital skills in a sector that will help New Zealand's global competitiveness.

Skills Shortage Slows Recovery summarises "discussions with information and communications industry leaders and chief information officers (CIOs) across Australia and New Zealand" showing how the IT skills shortage is slowing the economic recovery.

In October last year the Ministry of Economic Development conducted a survey into the IT skills shortage - ICT Industry Skills Gaps and Ultra Fast Broadband Roll-out Skill Requirements -  and found that “83% of companies surveyed found difficulties in recruiting qualified, skilled and experienced staff, and it was having a medium to major effect on their businesses.” Brett O'Riley the NZICT Chief Executive had this to say when the report was released. "These roles are essential to New Zealand's drive to improve productivity and also generate foreign exchange."

The problem is that if you have these skills, which are in such high demand, and there is a shortage, and you can earn great money with these skills, why would you accept less than half that money and go teaching?

I have three children and am lucky enough to own my own home. I would not have been able to afford my current lifestyle as a teacher. The first seven years of my working life I was in the IT industry. I worked for the New Zealand Herald, JP Morgan and Dendrite. The last seven years I have been teaching. I earned four times as much in the IT industry over the same time as I have done as a teacher. I decided to become a teacher because I wanted to make more of a difference and I felt that the computing education available to our children was missing some of the skills and abilities that I loved about computing. I could not have afforded to become a teacher if I hadn't saved, worked overseas and earned good money. How many people who would make excellent inspiring teachers of our kids cannot afford to do so?

This is why the current round of negotiations with the Ministry of Education is so important, not only for our children, our teachers and our schools, but also for our economy, our businesses and our global competitiveness. Our teachers need to be paid almost the same as they could be earning in industry if we are to attract the best people to teach our kids and we are nowhere near that situation at present.

Yours sincerely Max Ross, PPTA Member.