Too many barriers to hiring overseas teachers, secondary school principal says

Source: Radio New Zealand

The principal of a West Coast secondary school says there are too many barriers to hiring teachers who were trained or born overseas.

Sam Mortimer from Greymouth High said newly-qualified teachers weren’t paid enough to meet minimum pay rates for a “Green List” work visa, and the paper work is excessive.

She told RNZ nearly all the teachers she hired came from overseas.

“Our last one for a maths position, we didn’t have a single New Zealand resident application. We had some people that were training in New Zealand but not a single New Zealander applying for the roles,” she said.

Mortimer said hiring foreign teachers was challenging if they were beginning or early-career teachers because they often did not meet the threshold for minimum earnings.

“They just don’t reach the threshold to get a visa which tells you a little bit about our beginning teachers’ pay rates when they don’t even hit the minimum for getting a visa,” she said.

Mortimer said being an accredited employer did not help much.

“It’s just very difficult and challenging and time-consuming,” she said.

‘Why do we have to jump through so many hoops?’

Mortimer said the Education Ministry provided $4000 toward the cost of using recruitment companies but they tended to charge about $8000.

“So we take that hit every time as well,” she said.

Mortimer said she understood the need to ensure overseas recruitment was legal and above board, but schools should be trusted to offer genuine jobs and pay their teachers correctly.

“Why do we have to jump through so many hoops,” she asked.

Mortimer said the administrative load associated with hiring teachers was very time-consuming and she was lucky to be able to pass that job on to other staff.

She said teachers wanting registration to teach in New Zealand had to provide details of their qualifications and overseas registration to the Teaching Council and then go through a similar process to ensure they were placed on the right step of the salary scale.

“It doesn’t mean anything because when you actually get offered a job and you arrive you have to do something called salary assessment and then you again have to put all of your qualifications in,” she said.

“You don’t just have a seamless thing from one to the other. They have to be all looked at by me again, I have to verify everything, then it goes to salary assessment for them to decide where you are on the [salary] steps.

“For some of our teachers coming from overseas I know of instances of up to three months where they’re being paid on untrained teacher wages or right at the bottom of the trained-teacher wage if they can show that first before they can get their proper pay. And these are people that have already put out a lot of money to pay for visas, to pay for transport to come to New Zealand so it’s very unfair.”

Mortimer said teachers from the US and South Africa were keen to come to New Zealand.

The school’s executive assistant Emily Westacott said it had to estimate for Immigration New Zealand what teachers would be paid as part of the visa application.

She said in a recent case the school ended up with a lot of back and forth with Immigration New Zealand because a prospective teacher did not meet the minimum wage requirement.

“We ended up writing to the minister to just get her support because we needed this teacher to come in but even with a green list role, a secondary teacher, it wasn’t enough,” she said.

She said removing the minimum wage requirement for accredited employers would remove a lot of the stress.

“Secondary teachers are a green list role. It should just be a given that they’re coming to a New Zealand school, they’re going to be looked after, they’re going to be paid correctly and fairly because it goes through the Education Payroll system,” Westacott said.

“That process could be streamlined. Remove that requirement to put the salary in the job check, that would remove a lot of the stress.”

Administrative obstacles

Meanwhile, a New Zealander with Australian teaching qualifications told RNZ she nearly gave up because of the paperwork and fees.

Sophie Kemp said she decided to come back to New Zealand to teach this year but she nearly gave up because of the administrative obstacles.

Kemp told RNZ she assumed her qualifications and registration would be automatically recognised, but she had to pay about $850 for the Teaching Council to check she was registered in Australia and register her in New Zealand, plus the cost of an Australian police check.

Once she found a job, she had to provide information to Education Payroll to ensure she was paid at the right step of the salary scale, a process that included paying $750 for an international qualifications assessment by the Qualifications Authority.

She said the requirement seemed ridiculous.

“It’s not like I’m coming from some far away place where my qualification’s in a different language and it could be a culturally really different education system that I’ve trained in. It’s literally just Melbourne and pretty easy to look up if that Master’s of Teaching is an appropriate initial teacher education programme. Not $750-worth I would have thought,” she said.

Kemp said she assumed the trans-Tasman mutual recognition agreement would eliminate the need for so much paperwork and the charges.

She said the sums involved were a lot for someone on a New Zealand teacher salary.

“It just seems totally counter-intuitive to me that New Zealand is crying out for teachers, good qualified teachers, to come and help and they’re met not only with the admin that you have to go through,” she said.

“It takes months to get all these administrative jobs done and then for them to get back to you and then you finally start getting paid appropriately. It takes a long time, it’s incredibly expensive. Wouldn’t you want to make it easy?”

‘Still practical visa pathways’

Immigration New Zealand said it acknowledged that recruiting recently-qualified overseas teachers could present challenges for schools, particularly if they were on lower salary steps and could not meet some visa requirements straight away.

“For teaching roles eligible for the Green List Tier 1, Straight to Residence is designed for experienced teachers who are working at, or are offered, roles paid at the New Zealand median wage. It is not intended for newly graduated teachers or those early in their careers who are not yet earning at this level,” it said.

Immigration New Zealand said minimum pay thresholds were a core part of immigration requirements and were applied consistently across all sectors.

“They are used to reflect skill and experience and to ensure migrant workers are appropriately paid in line with the New Zealand labour market. These thresholds apply regardless of how salaries are funded, including in centrally funded school systems, which is why state and state integrated schools are not provided with a waiver from these requirements,” it said.

“While teachers on lower salary steps may not meet Green List thresholds immediately, there are still practical visa pathways that allow schools to recruit overseas teachers and support them to gain experience and progress over time.”

The Education Ministry said the International Qualifications Assessment ensured all overseas qualification holders were treated fairly.

“It is not possible to tell from the name that an overseas qualification is comparable to a New Zealand qualification. Not all Australian qualifications are equivalent to New Zealand programmes. The structure and programme requirements for qualification, such as master’s degrees, can differ between jurisdictions,” it said.

“The qualification content may also differ between individuals depending on their study pathway. Confirmation that the provider, programme of study, study pathway is officially approved and accredited helps to determine quality assurance measures are in place.”

The assessment also verified if the qualification was genuinely awarded to the holder and an additional evaluation confirmed it met this country’s initial teaching education programme standards.

Immigration and Education Minister Erica Stanford said newly-qualified teachers earned enough to qualify for a five-year Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV).

“Newly qualified teachers who gain their teaching qualification in New Zealand will also be eligible for a Post-Study Work Visa and then a further five-year AEWV,” she said in a statement.

“The Green List Straight to Residence pathway is deliberately targeted at experienced teachers, not newly graduated teachers. This is a feature across Green List Straight to Residence roles in general which targets experienced people in a given role, not new graduates. People who are just starting or at the beginning of their teaching career have up to five years on an Accredited Employer Work Visa to reach the required wage rate for residence,” she said.

Stanford said accredited employer status was needed for either the Accredited Employer Work Visa or the Straight-to-Residence Visa and getting it was a straightforward process for schools that took on average two to four working days.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/21/too-many-barriers-to-hiring-overseas-teachers-secondary-school-principal-says/