Anne Tolley Interview Analysis – Part I: Pay

Anne Tolley appeared on Q+A yesterday in this interview.

The interview starts with the most visible issue, that of pay. Tolley argues adjusting for New Zealand’s GDP, the “average” pay for a teacher is about $70,000. This seems a bit of an generous assessment. Espiner responds to that by asking is that nearer the higher end. Tolley in return states her assumption to get to that figure. A lot seems to hinge on what you mean by “average”, often it’s the choice in choosing the arithmetic mean, or the median.

Update: The ministry explains the calculations in a press release. The figure was based on the calculation of a mean salary. I have also made a further post about Kate Gainsford’s response to Tolley’s claim.

Neither Tolley nor Espiner seem to give much detail behind this exchange. Those involved in education will get it, but it would be lost on others, especially the more political ones. I will try to flesh out their exchange in detail.

Espiner means to say to get paid that much, according to the STCA salary scale, one would have to be near the top of the scale (top scale is step 14), have teaching qualifications (usually a subject based degree plus teaching diploma, which gets a teacher to start on step 7) with 6 or 7 year’s experience and have at least one unit.

Units are pay for extra responsibilities, like management units for a HOD or deputy principal duties or for particular projects a school runs. Which means a teacher with these units is probably teaching fewer classes than a teacher who does not, all other things being equal. This is part of what I mean when I have written in the past that the only career progression available to teachers is to teach less. Tolley refers to this when she talks about the “structure” of a teaching career.

Tolley responds that she has based her figure on a teacher in the “middle” of their career. So she’s saying that the average length of a teaching career is at least 12 years, by then a teacher would be near the top of the scale halfway through that. I do not know how she arrived at that figure. [Since this post has been updated, I now know otherwise.]

According to the statistics on this page, in 2008 the median age of a secondary teacher was about 40. I haven’t been able to find figures on the length of teaching service, but if you assume a teacher starts their career at 22 say, they would have 18 years of service to get to the median age of 40. There would be some adjustment for the fact that some teachers are career changers – but some of those years in other careers may count as steps up the payscale, so it may even out in the end.

So Tolley’s claim of the “average” career length seems credible. It seems that Tolley has arrived at her figure as the wage of a teacher with a median length of service. Espiner then compares it to the starting salary, in the mid 30 range. I don’t know how many secondary teachers actually start there. A teacher would start on step 7 with a 3 year degree plus a diploma, which would be $45,653 per annum.

The comment teachers are “disconnected” from the real world is then addressed by Tolley. She argues that teachers are “unrealistic” because they want bigger raises than what police, nurses and others settled for and point to 4% raises they got each year under the previous government. She also points out that many people have done without pay rises and Irish teachers went with a pay decrease. She has set the scene for the PPTA having to show that they deserve special treatment to get the pay increases they are asking for.

Tolley tries to dismiss the PPTA negotiations as if they are a loud minority, but doesn’t get far with it. Espiner catches her out with the PPTA having a huge membership of about 95%, but pulls his punch with this one too, with nearly all the members voting to strike as well. However, she does do well to dodge the performance based bullet. She asserts outright it’s not on the agenda and explicitly acknowledges that it won’t go down well with teachers; Essentially she’s saying she’s not going to go there, because it’s just not worth it. She is skilfully diplomatic in saying teacher expectations are “unrealistic”, denying the use of “greedy” by Espiner.

eh?

According to this press release, the TEU reckons that the Ministry of Education is going to run a TV programme like MasterChef, except with academics instead of people with culinary skills.

On first glance this seems a rather gimmicky, tacky idea. I imagine that I can’t be the only one thinking that using a “reality” TV show wouldn’t go down well with many academics or the public. I am curious about this shortage of academics. I suspect it’s a bit like the general teacher shortage. As in, there aren’t a shortage of people who are nominally qualified, and want to do the job, but a shortage of academics that universities want. Who would watch it? Everybody eats, so any kind of cooking show is going to have some chance at appealing to the general public. Whereas, academics don’t have that general sort of appeal. Academics live up in their ivory towers and don’t live in the real world, the average person on the street would say. If this programme does show up, I bet it will be in the Sunday morning slot.

On a different note: according to the Something should go here maybe later blog, I am now am ranked at #202 for kiwi based blogs. I’d like to thank you for reading my blog, and for even leaving comments from time to time. I am honoured and flattered to be ranked ahead of so many political blogs, especially considering my own opinions about politics (read this for context).

An Analysis of Teacher Shortages

Often teacher shortages are reported in the media. But what is a teacher shortage? According to an OIA response dated 5 October 2009, the Ministry of Education says:

Teacher shortages are determined by the number of teacher vacancies advertised and re-advertised in the Gazette.

A definition, albeit blunt, that is generally useful. It seems to be similar to using the unemployment rate as an indicator of a recession – whether or not one has a job is what matters most.

One reason the definition is blunt is that it doesn’t account for the actual number of apparently qualified candidates. Mathematics teachers are deemed in many places to be in short supply. But I asked one principal of an urban Auckland decile 3 school how many candidates would apply for a Mathematics vacancy. The principal told me that about 160 would apply. This is an apparent paradox. One would think that if there were a shortage there would be few or no candidates applying. But the paradox could be easily explained by schools wanting quality over quantity.

If this is the case it raises questions about the quality of teacher education and whether the right things are being done to address teacher recruitment and retention. It would appear that we are not training enough teachers well enough to the satisfaction of schools, and that simply increasing the number of training places will do little to solve the problem and have prohibitive costs.

The subject breakdown is below. The numbers are percentage of number of secondary and composite vacancies as at 7 September 2009.

Rank	Advertised	Readvertised
1	English 14%	English 21%
2	Mathematics 11%	Mathematics 10%
3	Science 7%	Māori 8%
4	PE 6%	Bilingual/Immersion 8%
5	Technology 5%	Home Economics 6%
6	Social Studies 4%	Music 6%
7	Bilingual/Immersion 4%	Science 5%
8	Māori 4%	Technology 5%

I also have some numbers on Auckland vacancies. However, I am unsure of the interpretation, as even assuming great doubling up in subject duties as single vacancies, the total percentage seems too high. They are also not just for the secondary and composite schools. I will seek further clarification.

Rank	Auckland
1	Technology 55%
2	English 38%
3	Mathematics 37%
4	Music 36%
5	Drama 27%
6	Science 24%
7	Health 18%
8	PE 18%

From the first table we can see that English vacancies are common. Its percentage rises for readvertised vacancies. I interpret that as English vacancies are a little difficult to fill than otherwise would be expected. The TeachNZ website states:

Teacher Recruitment Scholarships (Secondary Subjects)

These scholarships aim to encourage more people into studying to become a secondary teacher in these target subjects where there is the highest need: chemistry, home economics, mathematics, physics, technology and Te Reo Māori.

It is interesting English is not on the list, when it had been in the past and has the biggest shortage. Also the subject would be a high priority given literacy requirements for NCEA go up to level 2 as opposed to level 1 for numeracy requirements for university entrance.

Home Economics may seem an odd subject to be in shortage, but the numbers provided justify it – it is not on the top 8 vacancies overall, but appears difficult to fill as it jumps up into the top 8 readvertised vacancies. Te Reo also is difficult to fill, its proportion doubling when readvertised.