The Auckland Secondary Principals' Association is backing the secondary teacher union's claim for a housing allowance for teachers working in areas with high rents.
Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
The Post Primary Teachers' Association included the allowance in the claim it tabled for pay talks with the Education Ministry this week.
It proposed that teachers who rented their homes would be eligible for the allowance if they worked in areas where average rents were 10 percent higher than the national median, while those who bought their homes could get the allowance for three years.
Education Minister Chris Hipkins said he had not had time to consider the idea, but warned that the government would have to consider the impact on other public sector workers.
"If you were going to do something around geographical location for teachers and the cost of living in Auckland for teachers, then I think we would end up with an expectation that there'd be something similar for nurses and for other public service workers who would face the same cost pressures," Mr Hipkins said.
But the president of the Auckland Secondary Principals Association, Richard Dykes, said he hoped the ministry agreed to the claim.
"It would be exceptionally helpful," he said.
"I've just spent the last couple of weeks visiting teachers colleges around the country along with my other colleagues and the recurring message that we're getting from trainee teachers from other centres is that the cost of living in Auckland is a major impediment to them coming to Auckland."
An allowance would help persuade new teachers to move to the city for work, Mr Dykes said.
The inclusion of the allowance in the PPTA's claim was significant step for the union, he said.
"This is a big philosophical shift by the PPTA. Historically they've been very much 'we are a national body, we have a national salary' and I think it's quite significant that the PPTA has recognised the reality of hard-to-staff areas like Auckland and I'd really urge the minister to recognise that."
The principal of Macleans College in Auckland, Steve Hargreaves, said his school already paid $100 a week to new teachers and teachers who had just moved to Auckland, but he did not support the PPTA's claim for a government-paid allowance.
"This is a symptom of inadequate pay for teachers and really I think what the PPTA should be focusing on is making sure that the pay claim raises teacher salaries and then we won't need to be having fixes such as a housing allowance," Mr Hargreaves said.
The PPTA's vice-president, Auckland teacher Melanie Webber, has argued for some form of housing allowance for several years.
She said an allowance of to $100 a week would make a big difference for a lot of teachers.
"It will make it possible for them to live in Auckland. The allowance has been very carefully done in a way that it is looking at places where it is unaffordable to stay," she said.
The union's president, Jack Boyle, said it was not the PPTA's job to solve the housing crisis, but an allowance would make recruitment into high cost areas a lot easier.
"The idea is that where house prices are an additional barrier to recruiting secondary teachers, or to keeping them in the community, then this is another way of making it a little bit easier," he said.
"What we'd really like to see is for teachers to have some hope of living in the same community that they work in."