By Tom Kitchin for The Detail for RNZ
Sixty-hour weeks, "intense" workloads and dealing with students' mounting mental health challenges - as The Detail finds out, this is the reality of being a secondary school teacher in New Zealand in 2023.
Teacher strikes haven't been far from the headlines in 2023.
Back in March, primary, secondary and kindergarten teachers all walked off the job at the same time – the biggest education strike ever in New Zealand.
It just so happened that their collective agreements expired about the same time and they were all in the midst of negotiations for better pay and conditions.
"The union members had all decided that the offers weren't good enough and the driving force behind that was a high rate of inflation, driving costs up,'' RNZ's education correspondent John Gerritsen says.
Since then, primary and kindergarten teachers have settled – but secondary teachers remain in a deadlock with the Ministry of Education.
"Secondary teachers are really determined to get a pay rise that keeps their pay up with inflation...they've been looking at inflation figures and saying 'you're looking around seven percent inflation, we want a seven percent pay rise' – and the government's not come to the table with a seven percent pay rise.
"Most teachers are paid at or close to the top of their scale, which is around $90,000. If you look at the pay rises that have been offered so far, for most teachers it's probably half the rate of inflation, maybe three-and-a-half per cent."
So what's it like being a secondary school teacher?
Paul Stevens, an art teacher at Auckland's Rangitoto College and regional chair of the Post Primary Teachers' Association (PPTA), tells The Detail teachers shoulder a heavy workload.
He gets to school by 8am each day and while the bell rings at 3.20pm, there's often more work to deal with after that.
"You're going home and marking for a few hours, or doing some planning and preparation for the next day. It's not uncommon on a Sunday for teachers to work most of that day as well," Stevens says.
"Most weeks I'd be working between 50 and 60 hours a week and I'm sure plenty of people would come back and go, 'oh yes but you do have the term breaks', or 'the holidays', as people call them.
"I don't call them holidays because we have to remember, for teachers, those are the only weeks in the year where they have any flexibility about how they use their time."
Stevens says it's not uncommon for teachers to use the term breaks to mark a large amount of work.
"It's the only time you're going to have as a teacher that's not interrupted."
Stevens has been a teacher for about a decade and says the job has gotten harder over that time – particularly when it comes to pastoral care.
"Most teachers would acknowledge we need to be able to offer support for students and that aspect, I would argue, is more complex than it used to be – mental health challenges for young people are significant."
But he says there are moments that keep him in the job, when he's helping a student and "your heart's coming out of your chest".
"Helping them overcome a learning challenge or them realising something about who they are through the work you've done with them - nothing really makes up for that."
Ella Brown is in her fourth year of teaching at a west Auckland high school.
While she sees herself staying in the profession, she doesn't necessarily see herself staying in New Zealand.
"The reason why is partly the pay. If I go to Australia, I can get paid, like, $20,000 more off the bat," she says.
"The workload is worse here than it is in Australia, and the reason why is because of the way NCEA works – how much work we have to do as teachers to interpret the curriculum they give us and make it applicable to the classroom."
She says the workload is "intense".
"The hugest thing is seeing my friends get to come home and not do work. I know it sounds dramatic but I often am the first person to leave my flat and the last person to come home – and I'm working on weekends. I think, in my opinion, that's the biggest thing pushing teachers out of classrooms."
Find out more about what it's like to be a teacher in New Zealand by listening to the full podcast episode.
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