{"id":298443,"date":"2026-02-23T18:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T18:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/298443\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T18:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T18:00:08","slug":"can-putting-non-teachers-into-struggling-schools-fix-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/298443\/","title":{"rendered":"Can putting non-teachers into struggling schools fix them?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n When Uatesoni Filikitonga first walked into the classroom at Waitaki Boys\u2019 High School, he thought he would be shadowing a real teacher. He was then surprised to hear the rector say, \u201cKia ora boys, this is your new teacher\u201d, before leaving him alone, aged 21, in front of 30 teenagers,
\n some only three years younger than him.\n <\/p>\n

After leaving Auckland Grammar School, he\u2019d spent three years gaining a bachelor of arts in acting at the national drama school, Toi Whakaari. He never expected his first professional role would be Pacific Studies teacher at a high school in \u014camaru in a \u201climited authority to teach\u201d role \u2013 which allows unqualified teachers with specialist skills to teach in subjects where there is a shortage of teachers.<\/p>\n

As soon as the bell went, he says, his training kicked in. The one thing he knew how to do was perform, so perform he did. <\/p>\n

The experience led him to apply for the flagship programme of Ako M\u0101t\u0101tupu Teach First NZ, a teacher-training organisation. The part-state-funded programme is run by a charity launched 14 years ago. It has occasionally proved controversial in educational circles but is still relatively unknown outside the sector.<\/p>\n

\"NoNo drama: Uatesoni Filikitonga says Teach First gave him the confidence to believe his skills were of value in the classroom. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

It works like this: after a \u201crigorous\u201d selection process and intensive introductory course of just a few weeks, someone with no teaching experience at all can find themselves standing in front of a classroom of teenagers as a full-time teacher.<\/p>\n

Modelled on similar programmes overseas, collectively known as Teach For All, its goal is to close the inequality gap between the country\u2019s highest and lowest academic achievers. Its vision is to enable all young people to realise their potential.<\/p>\n

To do that it aims to attract \u201cexceptional people\u201d into teaching, allowing them to skip the usual years of education before placing them in schools with high levels of socio-economic deprivation, where they begin teaching immediately while studying for their formal qualification.<\/p>\n

Started here in 2012 by New Zealander Shaun Sutton, who had been through the equivalent programme in the UK, 400 people have completed the training, with another 130 currently signed up. All of them started their careers at high-needs schools, but not all have stayed there.<\/p>\n

In their first year, new Teach First teachers have 0.6 of a normal teaching load and are assigned a mentor from the school, funded by the Ministry of Education, to provide support for one day a week. In the second year, they teach 0.7 of a full load and mentoring funding is reduced to half a day a week.<\/p>\n

Chief executive Liam Munday says it has \u201ca bigger purpose and a bigger mission\u201d, which sets the organisation apart from traditional teacher-training programmes such as those run by universities.<\/p>\n

\"MovementMovement for change: Ako M\u0101t\u0101tupu Teach First NZ chief executive Liam Munday. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

Munday says New Zealanders don\u2019t talk much about the gap between our highest achievers and lowest achievers and between M\u0101ori\/Pasifika students and P\u0101keh\u0101\/Asian students, but it\u2019s there and it\u2019s vast, and his organisation is trying to do something about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that allows us to attract people who are aligned with that, who are both committed in the short term and the long term to seeing the change that is required within a particular community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cChange\u201d is a word Teach First uses a lot. Conspicuously, its motto \u2013 \u201cGrowing leaders for change\u201d \u2013 doesn\u2019t even mention teaching.<\/p>\n

Munday says it is looking for people who will strive for change throughout their career, \u201cwhether that\u2019s moving into leadership in schools, or potentially taking a step outside the classroom environment and working in policy. I want one of our alumni to come to me and say, \u2018I really want to start this organisation,\u2019 [even if] it\u2019s another non-profit organisation.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur theory is we\u2019re trying to get great teachers, but we\u2019re also trying to build this movement of leaders who are working in all different ways to create the systemic change that\u2019s required to really affect the inequity that we have within our education system, but more broadly as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ManurewaManurewa High School principal Peter Jones sees real benefit in being able to train and shape people to fit the unique context of his school. Photos \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

Glowing report<\/p>\n

Manurewa High School principal Peter Jones is a supporter of the programme and employer of trainees. This year, the school has three first-year recruits, who will join three starting their second year and two who have just graduated and are staying on.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of why it was set up, its purpose and what it\u2019s doing and continues to do, it is absolutely on the mark,\u201d Jones says. \u201cThere\u2019s a real need and point of difference from other teacher-training programmes. Nobody does it with the cultural and equity lens that Teach First does.\u201d<\/p>\n

In August 2024, the programme received a glowing External Evaluation and Review Report from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, which gave it grades of \u201cexcellent\u201d in every area. <\/p>\n

It reported trainees \u201cconsistently outperform sector benchmarks across all demographics\u201d and are \u201cwell equipped for teaching in culturally diverse environments\u201d.<\/p>\n

The course completion rate for M\u0101ori and Pasifika students in particular was significantly above that of the sector as a whole.<\/p>\n

Jones says he sees real benefit in being able to train and shape people to fit the unique context of his school, New Zealand\u2019s largest high-needs index school with more than 60 different nationalities, a strong indigenous educational framework and a focus on cultural identity. <\/p>\n

If you can teach at Manurewa High School, you\u2019ll be good anywhere.<\/p>\n

Manurewa High School principal Peter Jones <\/p>\n

He says the school faced challenges in the past with graduates of traditional training programmes arriving \u201cvery green\u201d and without the experience to survive.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes a special type of person to work in our context. And the more we get to shape them during that process, that very much helps.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the early days of the relationship with Teach First, the school struggled to keep graduates on after their initial two years. Jones felt Manurewa High was \u201cdoing all the hard yards\u201d, after which graduates would take what they\u2019d learnt elsewhere.<\/p>\n

The school now finds people who are already part of its community, or who it believes would be a good fit, and recommends them to Teach First, which then puts them through its own selection process.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then we\u2019ve got that real strong connection \u2013 it\u2019s actually been a way of, if you like, training our own,\u201d says Jones.<\/p>\n

While Teach First\u2019s main pathway is for degree holders, it also has a pathway for people without degrees but with relevant experience in the field.<\/p>\n

This has been particularly useful for Manurewa in developing some of the \u201creally strong people\u201d it has working in the school, particularly as teacher aids, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of our people haven\u2019t gone through a traditional uni degree because they\u2019ve not been able to do that for other reasons, not because they\u2019ve not got the capability or the potential to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"KateraKatera Rikihana-Tukerangi, who began relieving at \u014ctaki College and has since completed a postgraduate teaching qualification. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

A path for te reo<\/p>\n

Munday says the programme allows people from \u201cthe communities that we\u2019re looking to serve\u201d to help their own.<\/p>\n

\u201cA beautiful example of this is we\u2019ve had teachers who have been working as te reo M\u0101ori teachers within a school for many years but have never had the chance to train as a teacher formally because of the financial barrier.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says 70% of those who have been through the programme are still teaching, although he doesn\u2019t say what proportion have remained in low-decile schools.<\/p>\n

It has trained 50 te reo M\u0101ori teachers, which is a fifth of the workforce of 250 reo teachers. More than 50% of the current cohort of graduates are M\u0101ori or Pasifika.<\/p>\n

Katera Rikihana-Tukerangi is one of those teachers. A former social worker specialising in trauma, she was helping out at \u014ctaki College, where her four children were students, when the te reo M\u0101ori teacher quit. She began teaching the classes herself, initially as a reliever. Then she was accepted into Teach First.<\/p>\n

A few days into her initial intensive course, she got a call to say her mother was dying and had two to four weeks to live. Rikihana-Tukerangi considered quitting, but says her mother really wanted her to keep going, so she did. A week after burying her mum, she was back training.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing on this course has helped me to get through that,\u201d she says. \u201cThe wraparound that this course offers is so beneficial. It\u2019s not just a course, honestly. It\u2019s a life-changing experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says she\u2019s glad she decided to study later in life because she has so much more experience. <\/p>\n

Now 44, she has finished her two years in the programme, has a postgraduate teaching qualification and is planning to go on to study for her masters and eventually a doctorate.<\/p>\n

For her final project in the programme, she focused on kapa haka and its capacity \u201cto help students stand proud and be their authentic selves\u201d. <\/p>\n

The result was \u014ctaki performing in the regional competition for the first time in 20 years. <\/p>\n

In her two years teaching, the number of students studying te reo has grown from 40 to 150, roughly a third of the school.<\/p>\n

In \u014camaru, Uatesoni Filikitonga also found students keen to engage with cultural activities when he joined Waitaki Boys\u2019 High. He grew the Polyfest team from just over 20 students cribbing routines from YouTube to a group of 53 choreographing and performing their own work.<\/p>\n

He was also in charge of volleyball and rugby, and a team leader until his resignation late last year. He says Teach First gave him the confidence to believe that what he had to offer was valuable, \u201cno matter your experience, no matter your age.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou won\u2019t get this experience if you\u2019re stuck in a uni lecture room.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throwing shade<\/p>\n

Teach First\u2019s public relations team is currently making a push for attention, saying it has previously stayed out of the spotlight. But that is not quite accurate. Whether or not it has sought the media, it has been featured, and not always in the way it would have liked.<\/p>\n

In 2012, the PPTA commissioned independent researchers at Perth\u2019s Murdoch University to conduct a review of all existing studies into the overseas \u201cTeach For All\u201d programmes on which Teach First was based. <\/p>\n

The review, and subsequent academic paper in the Journal of Pedagogy, found such schemes, some of which had existed for decades, were often marketed as providing an opportunity for successful graduates to \u201cdo their bit for students in poor areas\u201d before moving on to \u201ctheir real careers in business and the like\u201d. The PPTA added such marketing was \u201cvery obvious\u201d in New Zealand. <\/p>\n

The review\u2019s summary reads: \u201cWith its missionary zeal, Teach For All is heralded by some as one way to solve socio-educational problems that governments cannot. Others condemn such schemes as not only patronising, but also as part of an ideologically driven and deliberate neoliberal attack on public education, teachers, teacher professionalism and working class or \u2018other\u2019 communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

People who enrol in that programme may see teaching as a way to get into a change leadership career as opposed to staying in teaching.<\/p>\n

Professor of education John O’Neill<\/p>\n

In a 2017 New Zealand Herald article headlined \u201cPutting graduates straight into classrooms does not always work\u201d, graduate Sam Oldham criticised it for using the classroom as a classroom, maintaining vulnerable students \u201cbecome subjects in someone else\u2019s training\u201d.<\/p>\n

He wrote that the organisation tells trainees to \u201cfail early, fail often\u201d, and that he had seen the results of such failure in the classroom. \u201cThis is not the fault of the teacher, but of a system that throws them into the most challenging classrooms in the country after six weeks of lectures.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also criticised the public funding component of the organisation, stating there was no research to support the idea Teach First grads were any better than their \u201cplebeian counterparts\u201d. <\/p>\n

He also threw considerable shade on how it chose participants. \u201cThe Teach First recruitment process leaves much to be desired. Participants are selected on academic records, their ability to demonstrate mysterious \u2018leadership qualities\u2019 and, ultimately, their ability to impress recruiters. None of these are a substitute for robust teacher education.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2015, the PPTA took an Employment Relations Authority case against Teach First for appointing participants to jobs that hadn\u2019t been appropriately advertised. The ERA ruled in favour of the PPTA.<\/p>\n

In 2016, also in the Herald, Louise Green, then president of the country\u2019s primary teachers union, NZEI Te Riu Roa, criticised the Teach First model, telling reporter Nicholas Jones, \u201cAny teacher will tell you how daunting it is to teach a class just after graduating with a teaching qualification. It beggars belief that someone could hope to be an effective teacher with anything less.\u201d<\/p>\n

Public & private funding<\/p>\n

Teach First is a registered charity. In the year ended June 30, 2024, it received $1.6 million in government funding on top of $890,187 in philanthropic donations.<\/p>\n

Massey University professor of education John O\u2019Neill is staunchly opposed to the organisation receiving money from the government. <\/p>\n

He believes the education system should be publicly funded and publicly provided. \u201cAnd if people want to operate outside that, then that\u2019s fine, but they shouldn\u2019t be subsidised by the public purse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Private providers have an advantage, he says, because they don\u2019t have the same infrastructure costs as universities, which have to spend to retain their research function, as required by law.<\/p>\n

He doesn\u2019t have a problem with Teach First offering programmes targeted at creating potential community change leaders, but he opposes \u201cthe government putting money into that when the chances are that the people who enrol in that programme may see teaching as a way to get into a change leadership career as opposed to staying in teaching\u201d.<\/p>\n

You could argue that [Teach First] is a Band-Aid \u2013 that it\u2019s kind of mission driven, but it hasn\u2019t changed the system in any way to actually improve equity overall.<\/p>\n

NZEI Te Riu Roa national secretary Stephanie Mills<\/p>\n

These views may sound somewhat surprising given that O\u2019Neill was on the academic advisory board for Teach First for several years, but he says they knew when they asked him to join the board he \u201cwasn\u2019t particularly well disposed\u201d to the organisation and he saw his role as \u201ca sort of critical friend\u201d.<\/p>\n

He is no longer on the board, having stepped away when it became a direct competitor to his employer, Massey University. He says throughout his involvement with Teach First he was impressed by both the commitment of the people and their commitment to a multicultural model.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t speak more highly of the people there: absolutely committed educators, absolutely committed to reducing educational inequalities, absolutely committed to te tiriti-based and Pacific values-based way of doing teacher education.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the board members at the moment are all people who\u2019ve made similar commitments to addressing socio-economic disadvantage through education.\u201d<\/p>\n

His views about the organisation, he says, come down to his personal beliefs and ideology. <\/p>\n

\u201cPrivate education should be privately funded. There\u2019s little enough money in state education as it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blossoming industry<\/p>\n

Until 2019, Teach First was the country\u2019s only employment-based teacher-training programme. That same year, then-education minister Chris Hipkins announced funding of nearly $12 million to develop to give trainees more employment-based options for teacher training. <\/p>\n

To that end, Hipkins succeeded. Since 2019, an eruption of employment-based training providers has occurred.<\/p>\n

In its first year, the School Onsite Training Programme that flowed from the announcement offered 240 places for student teachers to gain experience in secondary schools while studying toward their teaching qualifications. This year, it will offer 465 funded places in primary and secondary schools, including kaupapa M\u0101ori and M\u0101ori-medium kura.<\/p>\n

The funding includes a bursary worth $19,930 to support the student teacher\u2019s education and $2000 to the host school.<\/p>\n

Some of the higher profile organisations being funded include the Teachers\u2019 Institute, Auckland Schools\u2019 Teacher Training Programme, and the Teacher Education in Schools Programme. There are many more. Students in these programmes \u2013 unlike Teach First \u2013 are not employees and are not paid a salary. Instead, they receive a much smaller bursary, from which they also have to pay their fees.<\/p>\n

\"MixedMixed grades: From left, professor of education John O\u2019Neill and NZEI Te Riu Roa national secretary Stephanie Mills. Photos \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

Gauging the impact<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear how much difference Teach First and similar programmes have made to the issue of inequality in our schools, though it is clear that the problem has not gone away.<\/p>\n

Manurewa\u2019s Peter Jones says he has \u201chuge concerns\u201d about inequity in education and doesn\u2019t believe Minister of Education Erica Stanford is doing what\u2019s necessary to fix it.<\/p>\n

As to the benefits of the Teach First programme for his students, he praises its ability to enable people to get into teaching who may not have made it via traditional teacher training \u2012 including those already connected to the school who have become \u201camazing\u201d teachers. <\/p>\n

Stephanie Mills, national secretary of NZEI Te Riu Roa, says, \u201cYou could argue that [Teach First] is a Band-Aid \u2013 that it\u2019s kind of mission driven, but it hasn\u2019t changed the system in any way to actually improve equity overall.<\/p>\n

\u201cTeach First might disagree with that, but I guess what we\u2019d say is that all teachers in training should be given paid practicums and be funded in ways that they can actually sustain training. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn some ways, having some models which the government can point to and say, \u2018Well, if you can\u2019t afford to go to your tertiary institutions, why don\u2019t you just go and train in school?\u2019 is letting the government off the hook.\u201d<\/p>\n

The final word goes to the independent researchers from the University of Perth, whose 2012 findings on the international Teach For All movement remain pertinent. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn summary, at present, the story of TFA is neither black nor white, but rather a \u2018shades of grey\u2019 story. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn other words, TFA is the type of story without straightforward or neat answers, that few want to hear, and few want to tell.\u201d <\/p>\n

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