Source: Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA)
Advice for overseas teachers who may not have had their qualifications properly assessed
Feature image by Nils Nedel on Unsplash
Attention overseas teachers!
If you have overseas teaching qualifications and started teaching in New Zealand from 2015, NZQA may not have properly assessed your qualifications. It appears that in the period from 2015 – 2019 NZQA was only assessing the teaching qualification component and not the subject qualifications.
So, if you:
- started teaching in New Zealand between 2015 and 2019 inclusive
- have overseas education qualifications with substantive specialist content which were assessed by NZQA
- were assessed as G3 rather than G3+ by the Ministry of Education for salary purposes
- believe that the subject content of your qualification has not been given full consideration
then you may be affected.
Typically this would be someone with a three or four year education-based qualification which also contains specialist subject study of about two thirds of an academic year in the last year or over the last two years of a 4-year conjoint degree.
What is the offer?
NZQA has offered to reassess, on request, the tertiary qualification of anyone in this group of teachers who believe that their qualification contains the equivalent of a minimum of 72 credits at Level 7 in a specialist area (subject, special education or similar) which was not been recognised in the International Qualifications Assessment (IQA).
This reassessment service will be available until 30 June 2020, free of charge.
What will happen?
If NZQA can identify sufficient content at Level 7 or higher in a specific subject, they will provide a letter to that effect which you will then be able to submit to the Ministry of Education for salary reassessment.
If NZQA cannot identify sufficient level 7 subject content they will let you know.
What do I need to do?
Fill out the Subject Specialism Re-Assessment Request form which you will find on the front page of out website
Got an overseas teaching qual? You might be owed money! (ppta.org.nz)
Note: NZQA may request digital copies of the qualification documents and further information if required, particularly for IQAs completed in 2015, 2016 and early 2017, before NZQA moved to a fully digital process.
