The missed opportunity of pay equity: Fixing the teacher supply crisis

As Aotearoa marks International Working Women’s Day this Sunday (8 March), the recently released People’s Select Committee’s finding that the gutting of pay equity was a ‘flagrant and significant abuse of power’ by the coalition Government is a stark reminder of this shameful event.

On 6 May last year, the Government passed the Equal Pay Amendment Act 2025. This Act, which was pushed through Parliament in less than 48 hours, under urgency and without scrutiny, abruptly cancelled 33 active pay equity claims – dashing the hopes of 180,000 workers in female-dominated professions.

Teachers from early childhood through to secondary had spent more than four years, and significant effort and energy, developing and progressing their claim through the pay equity process. Overnight, this work was gone. We were devastated.

Teachers felt their work had been devalued and disrespected. They had been robbed of a pay rise in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. Personally, it was a significant blow. It was also professionally a missed opportunity for the Government to think beyond balancing its budget and look for practical ways of solving the teacher supply crisis.

Last week, the Ministry of Education released the 2025 Teacher Demand and Supply Planning Projection report. It revealed that the Ministry had underestimated the scale of the secondary teacher shortage. The updated scenario projects a likely shortage of 710 teachers in 2026, 510 teachers in 2027 and 190 teachers in 2028, while the worst-case scenario projections are even more extreme – predicting a shortage of 1,630 secondary teachers both this year and next year.

The current shortfall represents an average of almost 1.5 teachers missing in every secondary school in Aotearoa, with the situation even more dire in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics subjects and Te Reo Māori. These shortages force schools to cancel subjects, to hire untrained teachers, and to increase class sizes. Teacher shortages limit student achievement and require schools to make compromises which reduce the quality of education for our young people.

According to the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand, domestic enrolments in initial teacher education fell by 28% between 2005 and 2022, and a 2023 survey by the Council revealed that 58% of teachers said they were likely to leave the profession in the next five years.

The reasons behind the freefall in secondary teacher numbers are numerous and nuanced - the ageing workforce, for one thing - but there is no doubt that teacher pay rates are at the heart of the problem. As teacher salaries have declined relative to the median by 24%, the number of people training to be teachers has declined by 28%.

The decline in the relative salaries of teachers is also no mystery. Secondary teaching has not always been a female-dominated job. For most of the 20th century, men outnumbered women in teaching roles. This began to change towards the new millennium, as women entered the workforce - with full-time teacher data indicating a nearly 50/50 split by 1988. By 2002, Ministry of Education data, for both full- and part-time teachers, showed a slight female majority of 52%, which grew to 58% by 2017 and around 64% by 2024.

As more women entered the profession, teacher salaries decreased in relativity to the median wage. As salaries decreased, so did the number of people wanting to be teachers. The cause-and-effect chain is clear.

The pay equity process represented a possibility of helping to restore the median wage relativity of teacher salaries to a level that would entice university graduates to enter and encourage trained teachers to remain in the teaching profession. The changes to the Act mean that secondary teachers are now locked out of taking a claim.

Secondary teachers must have their access to a pay equity process restored. It is the just and fair thing to do for the individuals – to value their work, to pay them what they are worth, regardless of the gender of those doing it. It is also vital for the future of the profession, and a pragmatic step that the Government may regret not taking, as the job vacancies grow.

-       Jo Brunskill is an advisory officer and pay equity advocate at PPTA Te Wehengarua