It’s Time to Teach Back Home

Great to see the NZ Government finally getting on board with the latest NZEI slogan “It’s time”.

Of course, they tried to be cool with it, and put in a New Zullund accent in the spelling – “It’s Toym to Come Home and Teach in New Zealand”.

In the latest effort from the Government to try and lure teachers back home, the first website has been launched.

https://teachbackhome.co.nz

The fancy graphics and videos can’t have been cheap.

The site goes to outline the incentives to come back to New Zealand and teach.

• Up to $7000 relocation grant (limited number)
• Three agencies to assist you finding a job “…in Auckland” (and in other parts of the country!).
  
• A child willing to give you their lunch (Seriously!?)
  
• Videos of teaching happening in New Zealand.
• The lack of security checks for weapons in New Zealand schools (Seriously!?).
  
• A list of a few latest job listings from the Education Gazette and a link to take you there to see more.
• A list of registration requirements before you can teach in New Zealand.

Yes there is a degree of humour in the recruitment drive – but it treats it like a bit of a joke, which isn’t entirely ideal.
But at what cost? Just looking through the site, there are several areas where the $10 million dollars for recruitment is being spent

• Website design – probably exorbitant given the visual media costs and prior history of prices paid for websites by the Government.
• $5K and $7K relocation grants
• Ministry of Education “contracted recruitment agents”.
• Several student story videos and other video media.

However; the grants were already in place PRIOR to the $10million dollar scheme, as per this article: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11981974

Of course, there are other costs involved as well, and it speaks volumes when those that have returned to teach here are then let down by the system and have since quit! Not exactly the best advertisement.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11924965

I certainly hope that this isn’t the only plan to address the teacher shortage. Hopefully it’s low down on the initiatives.

It’s time to start valuing the Teaching profession – make it a viable career, with appealing pay and career prospects. Reduce the workload and motivate the current teachers enough to tell the world about what an awesome job they have, rather than how tough it is at the moment. Don’t offer us a child’s lunch or suggest that not having to walk through a metal detector is what makes our education system the best in the world.