Early childhood teachers fleeing to Australia say they have no choice if they want to get ahead in life.
The state of Victoria is offering incentives to lure New Zealand ECE teachers – including relocation support of up to $50,000.
One New Zealand-based recruiter told Breakfast she’s getting hundreds of calls from ECE teachers wanting to make the move, describing it as a “mass exodus”.
A Kiwi ECE teacher who has made the move, Ken Ah Honi, told Breakfast that “everything’s better” after heading across the ditch.
He said the high cost of living in New Zealand and the low wages in the sector are what prompted his move.
“I wasn’t able to live independently on my own, so I had to move back in with my parents,” he said.
“It’s just not something I wanted to do.”
When an opportunity to head to Australia and make more money revealed itself, he quickly snatched it up.
Ah Honi said he is now making $30,000 more than he would’ve earned working in New Zealand. According to careers.govt.nz, ECE teachers in Aotearoa earn between $57,000 and $100,000 a year. In Victoria, new graduates can earn up to $80,000, a recruiter told Breakfast.
Working conditions were also a major pull factor leading to his move.
He said that while some companies in New Zealand provide “quality childcare”, the lack of staff meant it was being affected.
“There were times when I was sick, and there just wasn’t enough staff to support us, so I went in sick.”
“It wasn’t ideal for my own wellbeing,” he said.
When asked what would bring him back to New Zealand, he said: “Maybe if we’re seen as valued and seen as more important — our roles as educators and not seen as babysitters.”
He also wanted to see better funding, so ECE teachers could be better looked after.
NZEI Representative Megan White shared the same thoughts, saying the industry was in crisis – with teachers overworked, undervalued, and underpaid.
She wants the sector's funding system reviewed and called for pay parity with teachers.
“We know [the Government’s] plans for what they’re doing to our funding system, and what they’re doing saying about pay parity for us – it's scary, and it means that we're gonna have a lot fewer teachers than we do now.”
The associate minister in charge of ECE told Breakfast that better funding was on the way. (Source: Breakfast)
Associate Minister for Education David Seymour said previous governments' failures had led the sector to its current state.
“First of all, you’ve got to recognise this is not just ECE,” he said.
“Last year New Zealand had a record outfield of New Zealand citizens, a net 47,000 Kiwis left the country,” he said. “Wages and productivity are lower in New Zealand.”
“We’ve had successive Governments that have not focused on productivity, have not focused on getting more homes built and as a result, it is attractive for people to leave New Zealand.”
He said however, more people are moving to New Zealand to be ECE teachers, which balances out the numbers who are leaving. But low morale in the sector “is true”, he said.
The big issue is money, and Seymour said the Government plans to boost the sector in the upcoming Budget.
“We put about $2.7 billion of taxpayer money into ECE each year, and we’ll increase that in this Budget.”
But Seymour said the Government was not looking at pay parity with teachers, calling it “inflexible”.
“Where it applies, it is actually inflexible, and it creates very strange incentives — for example, you’ll see centres where somebody who’s not that experienced and who comes in from overseas actually ends up getting paid more than somebody who is at a lower pay grade but from New Zealand,” he said.
“Pay parity means that you have to pay somebody who is a New Zealander who recently graduated less than someone who is from overseas with less New Zealand experience and less useful to the kids in that centre at that time.”
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