Get ready to move to New Zealand
See what you need to do to live and work in New Zealand as a teacher
Once you have decided to live and work in New Zealand as a teacher, there are a number of important things you must do, and should know, when making the move. Read this page for more information. You can also view and download the guide and the checklist for overseas teachers moving to New Zealand in the popular resources section of this page.
Teach in New Zealand webinar
Doug: Kia ora, and a warm welcome to our Teach in New Zealand webinar for teachers who want to find out more about teaching in New Zealand. Kia ora.
We appreciate you joining us from your part of the world. I'm Doug and I'm here with my colleague Laura from New Zealand's Ministry of Education. We work in the Education Workforce, Supply and Leadership team. Our team work on domestic and international supply of teachers for the New Zealand education system. In the background, making things work is our marketing colleague, John.
This is our agenda for our webinar. And we're joined by our colleagues from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, which recognises overseas teaching qualifications, the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand, which is the registration body, and professional standards body for the teaching profession and Immigration New Zealand, which manages the immigration system. Together, we will take you through the steps to teaching in New Zealand.
This is one of the first of a series of Teach in New Zealand webinars we're running this year for overseas teachers with further webinars on deep dives into pieces of the journey. We'll let you know when we schedule those if you're interested.
We have a beautiful country with great lifestyle, unique culture and a unique student-centred education system. We want you to come and join us and teach our kids in New Zealand. So come on down.
And this webinar focuses on secondary schools in particular. This slide shows some useful tips. Our greatest shortage of teachers in secondary is science, technology, maths but also in English, music and physical education; we also need relief teachers.
So if you want a working holiday, kind of, trying what New Zealand's like before you buy, and you're under 35, then you might consider coming to New Zealand and relief teaching is a good way to help finance your holiday.
We'll start with a brief overview of our education system and then our colleagues from our partner agencies will take you through what teachers need to know about how they can teach in New Zealand.
This is a slide which just gives you an indication about the recruitment process and the way that works here. We'll come back to this later on in the webinar. But the New Zealand education system’s student-centred pathway providing continuous learning progression and choice so that students progress every year, and they're learning at one level that sets the foundation for the next steps along the chosen pathway.
Our education system has three levels: early childhood education from birth to school, entry age, primary and secondary education from 5 to 18 years of age.
Further education, which is for higher and vocational education. Unlike other countries, the role of the Ministry of Education is limited and employment of teachers in the schooling system is devolved to schools. One of our colleagues describes the New Zealand education system as 2,500 education systems.
The Ministry funds the system, sets the curriculum, resources schools, and builds classrooms. The Ministry works with the teaching unions to negotiate pay through collective agreements and does salary assessment based on advice from the employing school and then pays teachers. But at school boards, which are drawn from the community who employ teachers. That's a 2-minute summary of the New Zealand education system for you.
Just before we introduce our next speaker, costs for which are outlined in the webinar can be recovered through our overseas relocation grant. This gives you up to $10,000. There's a link to the tax guidelines on our Education Workforce website.
This and other links from the agencies who are with us today will be at the end of the Q&As. We also have a navigator service to help you if you need assistance during your journey and we will put their contact details in the Q&As as well.
So, hand over to Dolly and Taise from NZQA. Dolly: Thanks very much, Doug. Kia ora from a very lovely day in Wellington. My name is Dolly Seow-Ganesan and my colleague Taise Mozzato and I will be taking you through what we look for when we evaluate overseas qualifications in New Zealand. So, next slide please.
Just a brief overview of what we do. So, we're from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, we are a government agency and one of our roles is to evaluate overseas qualifications for recognition in New Zealand. Most of the time the recognition outcome is used for immigration purposes or for professional registration, employment, and further study.
Our evaluation principles are based on the UNESCO recognition treaties that New Zealand is a signatory to. So, currently we're a signatory to the Lisbon and Tokyo Convention. And also the one thing that we cannot consider when we're evaluating an overseas qualification is work experience or competency. We are only focused on the qualification that's been awarded.
So, we have three types of international qualifications assessment. We have what we call a standard IQA, a skill shortage list IQA, and a teaching IQA. So for those of you wanting to teach in New Zealand, then you need to select the teaching IQA because the evaluation will help you, and will help the Teaching Council and also the Ministry of Education make informed decisions. Next slide please.
So, who needs a teaching IQA? Well, actually if you want to come to New Zealand to teach, you need a teaching IQA. So, this includes early childhood education teachers, primary and secondary teachers. The only time where you don't need a teaching IQA is if your qualification is on the pre-approved overseas teaching qualifications list and this is on NZQA website.
The cost of a teaching IQA is $746 New Zealand dollars for up to three qualifications. It takes between four to six weeks to evaluate the application provided and all the documentation is submitted.
And what causes delays? Well, incomplete applications are the biggest cause of delays. And that means that when an applicant submits an application, it's missing documents. The quality of the documents is very hard for us to see.
And also, sometimes, you know, the verification information is missing, so we ask that if you're applying for a teaching IQA, you must be able to provide evidence that the qualification you submitted has been genuinely awarded. And again, on our website, it tells you where you can obtain that verification from.
And the last bullet point about delays is the lack of response from institutions or government agencies. Now, sometimes there are reasons for this, but we would normally follow up if we're not hearing from a provider or an agency.
I'm going to pass to my colleague Taise, who's going to talk about the outcomes, how we evaluate the teaching IQA and the outcomes that you will see. Over to you, Taise
Taise: Thank you, Dolly. Kia ora everyone. Good afternoon from Wellington. It's a pleasure for me to be sharing a little bit of information about the teaching International Qualification Assessment. We call them teaching IQA. So, 2 parts that are really important to know is what we normally evaluate.
Dolly has kind of mentioned things that we do not evaluate on here first. We do validate certificates, diplomas, bachelor degrees, master's degrees and doctoral degrees. Of course, those that have been awarded by overseas recognised high education institutions, universities, all teacher education providers.
However, we are unable to evaluate the study that you may have completed that does not lead to the formal qualification, such as short courses or professional development courses. We also do not evaluate your teaching license or your teaching certification, although we would evaluate the qualification that has led you to enter into the profession to get that license.
In terms of teaching training pathways that we do see quite often in our office, we do have people, secondary teachers, for example, that would have completed their qualification, their bachelor degree, their first degree in teaching either for ECE or primary or secondary, and this would have normally a duration of four years, and will include both content in the teaching area, curriculum and pedagogy, but also will include, in some cases, specialist content if they are specialist teachers of a subject.
We do also have a really common pathway that is the one that we have quite a lot for secondary teachers in New Zealand. It’s people that may have completed a non-teaching degree, like a Bachelor of Arts in in a specified subject or a Bachelor of Science in in chemistry or physical education, whatever it would be. And then after that, they decided to enter into the teaching profession, and then they complete a post degree, initial teaching education qualification only covering the pedagogy content and, you know, information on how to teach.
Those could be a master’s degree or a postgraduate or graduate diploma in education, depending on the country where you were studying. This is the most common pathway for secondary teachers in New Zealand – three-year degree plus 1- or 2-year degree in a teaching subject, but we do see the others as well.
So, this is what we evaluate and when we evaluate those qualifications, Dolly did say that we evaluate up to three quals and this is because, as I mentioned, some people have one qual, but some others have two or three. So, we evaluate them all because the initial teaching education qualification will help you with your teaching registration. But the other qual will also help you on the assessment of your salary.
When we evaluate the qual, we first compare to our framework. In New Zealand, there is a framework of qualifications, called New Zealand qualifications and credits and credential frameworks.
We don't have levels and qualifications assigned to each of those levels, so we first compare your qual to one of the qualifications on this framework. For example, we would compare your qual to a bachelor degree or master's degree or doctoral degree. Once we've established that, we would then look at if the qualification has teaching a subject, then we will look at those subjects and evaluate against the New Zealand initial teaching education standards, which are set by the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand.
So, once we evaluate those, we will tell whether your qualification meets those requirements, meet the core knowledge requirements of a New Zealand initial teaching education and then we will state the sector.
If the qualification does not meet these requirements, we will also state that and however we will include the reasons why you did not meet the requirements in full. When a qualification does not meet the requirement, it doesn't mean that you cannot progress with your journey for registration. It only means that you require further assessment by the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand, and you will have to apply for their registration through different means, and I believe they will talk more about it before. So, we will take the reasons and they will follow up from there.
There is one more part that is covered in this slide is that some qualifications do include, as I said, not only the teaching subjects, but they also include subjects, especially the subject that you're going to teach. So, when this happened, it's normally four years degree. We would also do an evaluation to check whether your qualification has a subject specialism, and then we will confirm whether it meets or not. That statement is used by the salary assessment unit only and is not used for teacher registration applications.
And this is all about what you would expect to see in an IQA outcome when you have your IQA outcome, you can then progress into the next stage.
If you have any questions about the IQA process, you can place contact us on qrsteaching@nzqa.govt.nz. There is also a lot of information on our website, and we will be sharing the information at the end of this webinar, all the links in the Q&A chat. So, thank you for being with us today; I look forward to answering all your questions at the end of this presentation, and I will now hand over the presentation to the next speaker. Thank you.
Doug: Kia ora Doug here again. Just like to introduce our colleague from the Teaching Council of Aotearoa, Kate. Kate will take you through what you need to do to gain provisional registration. Just remind you that if you want to ask us questions, please pop them into the Q&A and we will endeavour to answer them hopefully. Thanks, Kate.
Kate: Thank you, Doug and kia ora koutou. My name is Kate and I am the team leader of the registration and certification team here at the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand, and I'll just talk you through the application process for an overseas-trained teacher.
To apply, you can go onto our website and the online application system called Hapori Matatū and create an account and start your application from there. Now, I'm just going to go through all the documents that you will need to upload as part of your application.
So, we start off with the proof of identity that you have to provide in order to verify your identity so we can send off police vets internally. As part of that, you may need to provide a name-change document as sometimes it appears that applicants have a different name on their qualification, for example, compared to the name that they apply with. So, we just need to connect the dots between an application and the documents provided.
We also require police certificates from all countries you resided for 12 months or more, and this has to be issued within the last 6 months from when you apply. Then the most important part we require your teaching qualifications and any underpinning qualification if applicable. That means, for example, if you completed a postgraduate diploma in teaching and you also will have to provide your underpinning qualification, for example Bachelor of Arts.
As NZQA has explained the pathway for international qualification assessment or confirmation on a pre-approved list and we require those assessments. You can upload electronic copy to the application, and we can verify that on the NZQA website.
In addition, we also need language-competency requirements evidence to meet the language requirements as part of the teacher registration and practising certificate as well as teaching evidence. So, teaching evidence could be informed from testimonial reference letters, recent evaluation, or appraisal, as well as registration details you may have. All these are linked to our website, if you require any further information on what a testimonial should be like, or if you don't have those specific documents on hand.
Now, frequently asked questions, so does Teaching Council require specific police clearances for some countries, so just make sure you have a look on our website to see if required a different police clearance to, for example, Immigration New Zealand. If you can't find any specifications regarding the police clearance, you can follow the immigration police clearance advice as we follow those as well.
We also require all documents to be certified when authorised unless they can be verified online through a link verification or we have received documents directly from the issuing body. For example, a school can email us directly the documents for teaching evidence, for example.
One common error applicants make is they apply for teacher registration only? However, if you're intending on teaching in New Zealand, you will also require a practising certificate, so just make sure that you include your practising certificate when you apply through the online portal.
A common delay on the application process might be because the English-language competencies are not met, or the IQA has not been yet processed, or yeah, has not been applied for. As I said, name-change documents may be required. And another thing to mention is the teacher registration is not sector specific. So the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand does not register s teacher sector-specific meaning as a primary teacher, a secondary teacher or an early childhood educator.
So, once you get teacher registration and a practising certificate, you can teach in any sector and it’s up to the school or the employer to deem you qualified and have the right experience for that role.
We can prioritise processing of an application, especially if you have a job offer, then usually we will get job-offer priorities to the Ministry of Education navigators, or you can also contact us and our lovely customer support team that will forward on the job offer so we can prioritise the application.
Alternatively, if you're already in New Zealand and have accepted a job offer and already starting, however, for some reason there is a delay in processing application, the professional leader or principal of your employment can request an extension to teach for you while we're processing your application, and this will allow you to teach lawfully in New Zealand while we're still processing the application.
And the discretionary pathway is also an option. So, if NZQA said any qualification may not need the core knowledge requirements of a New Zealand ITE programme – in those cases, an applicant can apply under the discretionary pathway, and the Teaching Council then will assess your qualifications, teaching experience, and other professional development, and other qualifications as a package to determine whether you are satisfactorily trained to teach, and you may be granted registration and a practicing certificate as an exception to the policy. But all that information is also on our website, if you require anything further.
If you have any questions, later on, or when you start your application, feel free to e-mail us through enquiries at teachingcouncil.nz. That’s it from us. Thanks.
Doug: Thanks, Kate, for the overview of the registration process and those useful tips, and thanks to all of you for staying with us.We appreciate you’re busy and you're taking time out of your busy day to be here with us.
And have we got any questions going in the Q&As, Laura. One question, OK, we will have a look at that when we get to the end of the webinar. Next, we'd like to introduce our colleagues from Immigration.
New Zealand, Fiona White and Christina Tao, who will talk to us about immigration.
Fiona: Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you, Doug. Thank you for joining us this afternoon. It's really very good of you to give up your time. Doug mentioned that Christina, my colleague, would be here, but she's not able to at the moment. She may join us later.
I'm Fiona White, and I'm the engagement partner with responsibility for the education sector at Immigration New Zealand. If Christina does arrive, she'll answer some questions in the Q&A we go along. So, I'm going to give you a brief introduction to the visa categories that you can use to work in New Zealand, and I'll also give you some tips about smoother processing of your application.
So, let's start with the Accredited Employer Work Visa, sometimes referred to as the AEWV. You may well have heard of that. So, the Accredited Employer Work Visa is a three-check process. It's the preferred temporary work visa that you would use to be to work here as a teacher, and that visa can be valid for up to five years. It also provides pathway for work to residence for green list tier 2 occupations.
So, the AEWV has three steps. So the first two steps are led by the employer and the last by you. So, I’ll only speak briefly about the first two steps, but I think it's really good for you to know what has to happen before you can actually apply and lodge your application.
So, step one is the employer accreditation. So employers need to be accredited to hire a migrant worker on an AEWV. So, that is critical to the whole process.
Step 2 is the job check, so that this is where Immigration New Zealand checks the job. We’ll look at things like whether or not it pays the median wage or the market rate. We may look in some cases, whether they are New Zealanders available to do the job or not.
So, they are various things we just need to make sure that that all looks legitimate. So, immigration New Zealand will do the first two stages once they're completed and approved, everything is ready for you to take the lead. So, just remember you can't apply until the first two stages are complete.
So, step three is the Accredited Employer Work Visa. This is where you go into the immigration online and submit your application. You must meet our health and character requirements and any skills and experience requirements that were stipulated as part of the job check taking place in in stage two there.
So, when an employer applies for accreditation there's certain obligations they have to be able to meet if they're employing migrants, so they've got to be genuinely operating a business or an organisation. They're also responsible to provide settlement support, activities and services for you as a new migrant. And they also have to be compliant with specific immigration and employment and business standards and these things really help to protect your rights as a migrant.
I’ll move on now to the job check, the middle stage. So, this is when the employer applies for a job check. Now, it's very important they've got to put in a detailed job description of the role that they need to fill. They also have to have an example of the employment agreement that you are going to be signing, including the hours of work and the salary. Those are also absolutely critical things.
And sometimes, if necessary, they may have to show evidence of job advertising, but not for secondary school teachers. They also need to show what the minimum skills are for the role. So, what qualifications and experience are necessary to fill that.
So, the employer must take reasonable steps to ensure that you're suitably skilled before sending you a job-token code to make your application because once a job check is approved that results in a unique code or sometimes referred to as a job token, and that allows you to apply for your work visa online, so you will receive that via an e-mail and you'll receive a unique link for you to accept the request to apply, click on that, use the link and submit your application.
Now we'll move on to the actual visa application. So, this is where you take over; this is in your hands. So if you've got your link from all your job token from Immigration New Zealand, you need to click on it to start your application, as I just said before. So, the skills and experience that you show in your visa application must match the skills and experience that the employer told us were required as part of your job-check application. So, those two things have to match. So, INZ will check the details of the employment, the employment agreements and things that they provide earlier meet those, match up with what you're saying in your application, so you have to be suitably qualified and then you have to meet those generic health character and bona fide qualifications as well.
So, that is a very simple going over the Accredited Employer Work Visa. Now I will just have a little look at residence pathways, because there's also a great option in there; some options for you as well.
So, there's three skilled residence pathways. The best probably for you, the first residence one would be the green list, and that's an occupation-based pathway for eligible migrants and specified highly skilled, hard-filled occupations, such as secondary school teachers.
So, the green list has two tiers. Secondary school teachers are on the green list at tier 1. That means you can apply straight for residence from on or offshore, and if you have family or a partner, they can also be included in your application at that same time. School principals, special needs teachers, primary and early childhood teachers are also on the green list, but they're at tier 2. That means that they can work to residence, so they have to have worked here two years in an approved role before they can apply for residence.
And the third category is the skilled migrant category. Sometimes people call it the SMC and that is another way to recognise individual skills and those areas that New Zealand needs to fill medium to long-term shortages, and it requires a combination of occupational registration qualification, skilled work experience and if you can reach a total of 6 points in the right place, then your application may well be approved.
So, normally this category would be for applicants who don't have the options of straight to residence or work to residence, so your option would be the preferred straight to residence.
So, just to recap. For a secondary school teacher, you decided you want to come and work in New Zealand, so you've got two pathways you could follow. You can arrive first on an Accredited Employer Work Visa and that's valid for up to five years.
And you can work here, see how you like it. And then you can apply for residence once you're a bit more settled. Or you could go for the second option, which just allows you to come straight into New Zealand as a resident, having applied for a green list, tier one residence visa. And as I said earlier, you can apply from offshore, and your family are included.
So, when you arrive in New Zealand, you're arriving as residents, you can start working. Your partner, if you have one, can work and your kids can also go to school as domestic students.
So, here are the very basic mandatory requirements. You must be 55 years old or younger. Your job offer has to be from an accredited employer, whether it's for residence or for the AEWV if to meet the health and character and in some cases, there may be English-language requirements required if it’s not a green list role.
So, I just thought I would give you a little look at this. Secondary school teachers were only added to the green list residence category in May 2024, and since then we have had 215 applications approved, which is pretty good. That means there's 215 happy new secondary school teachers here in the last six months or so, but obviously we want to see more teachers apply under this category. So, this is a really good opportunity for you to teach and live here.
I thought you might be interested just to see some of the demographics in there. So, the main age group is 31 to 40 years old. Followed by a slightly higher age group of 41 to 50, and the split between the slightly more male teachers than female. But I'm not really quite clear where that is. And then on the left are the main nationalities where the green list workers coming from.
So, another thing that I really should mention too, and this, I think Doug did mention this earlier, is the working holiday scheme and that's an excellent way to just come in and have a taste of New Zealand and, you know, see how it feels for you. So, the eligibility criteria there on the slide, I won't bother reading that out, but I'll just say that this category of working holiday visa is open to 18- to 30-year-olds, which is quite good because it's that's quite a nice broad age span and it will entitle you to work here for up to 12 months. So that is something to think about. So, presently the working holiday visa is 240 New Zealand dollars, but it will be going up to 670 New Zealand dollars on the 1st of October (2024).
Processing advice and visa fees. So, here's just some of the not-so-exciting things. So, let me explain. So, our processing approach for the skilled residence visas, we want everything to be, you know, fast and as efficient as possible.
So, as Taise earlier said, please submit a complete application. Make sure you've got sufficient employment and work experience information. The required registration information, the required qualification assessment and any other sort of evidence, like partnership evidence or custody or adoption documents. Anything, you know, there may be other things like that and do consider perhaps if there is a health issue that you know you may need to supply further information on. So the more info basically we receive up front, the faster that application can be. allocated to an immigration officer and then the file can be completed. So, it's really good to put in a complete application.
So, applications that don't have registration, police checks, qualification assessments, I mean, that impacts the overall ability for us to allocate and process that timely and probably going to be frustrating for you and also for your employer, so it's good for all of us.
And, if necessary, we do have an escalation process and it's online. So it's the New Zealand immigration website; you can just search priority processing or visa escalation, and there are criteria for that that you'll have to meet. So, make sure that before you put in a request, you've ticked all of those. You are, you know, you've had a reasonable attempt to see that you have a reasonable chance of meeting the criteria, and also, just as a reminder, keep us up to date if there any material changes during the application process. So, if you've got something you need to update us about, just let us know.
Key observations from applications we've looked at on the green list straight to residence. There've been issues around the annual salary or hourly rates being below the median wage, which it can't be, and the median wage for residents is 31.61 New Zealand dollars an hour, or even simple things like an employer not having accreditation, or it's fixed-term employment for less than 12 months and also the remuneration or pay step ranges are not stated on the offer letter or collective agreement, so just little things like that, keep an eye on those.
Visa fees. Right, so, at the moment an accredited employer work visa costs 750 New Zealand dollars. However, recently the government announced that the fees and levies for visa applications are going to be increasing from the 1st of October (2024), so that Accredited Employer Work Visa will be going up to 1,540 New Zealand dollars.
I won't bother about the steps that your employer has to do, but they're on the slide there, and a skilled residence class visa will be going up to from $4,290 to $6,450 and skilled residence include all of those 3 categories, so the skilled migrant category and the two tiers of the green list.
So, you'll probably be keen to know how long it will take to process your application, and I think it's a good idea to be aware of the processing timeframes and we publish them regularly on the Immigration New Zealand website. So, what I have on the screen here are the average processing times. However, please note, and it's in blue there that registered teachers do have priority in the system.
So, your applications, once they come in, once they’re complete, they can be allocated to an immigration officer for assessment, and they are given priority over other types of applications. So, applicants from the health system, say medical specialists, also have the same priority, but secondary school teachers are very lucky to have this afforded to them as well.
So, the Accredited Employer Work Visa could take three months and you're straight to residence application, if you choose to do that, could take four months, but it should be shorter than that. And that will really depend on the completeness of application.
So, there's a link here. I'm sorry, it's in pale yellow for some reason, but that is where you can find all the information you need about processing times as part of www.immigration.gov.nz online, so, I think that's me. Please feel free to pop any questions into the Q&A and we'll see what we can do. Thanks, everyone.
Doug: Thanks, Fiona, and to all our colleagues for their presentations. There's been lots of useful information there, especially about timings for applications. Keep an eye on the Immigration New Zealand website because the Government's actually actively making changes to the immigration settings and likely to do so over the next six months or so.
The same is also for the other government agency websites as they keep moving
in the requirements, so, remember that going through all these steps can take longer than you think. Six months is a minimum, but you can speed this up with good documentation, and having all that.
So we've got 15 minutes and what we'll do is go into the Q&As and, just to sum up, we've taken you through the key steps of becoming a teacher in New Zealand. Our usual times for recruitment are from now on to December ahead of next school year. And schools are recruiting now to make appointments for the first term next year.
Beyond that, we also recruit throughout the year to try and align with the various terms. Remember, have a look at the Education Gazette. The link is in the Q&A and there's information on the Education Workforce website. We've got lots of helpful resources and guides there, and the Ministry of Education's major website, Education New Zealand, will give you a good background on Kiwi culture, the curriculum, professional development we have in place for overseas teachers to help you integrate into our system understand it, and receive some mentorship along the way to help you be a teacher here.
All of the agencies on today's webinars have web sites, so naturally, if you're a science and maths teacher or technology teacher, English, music, physical education, we'd love to hear from you. As we said, if you want a working holiday, and you're under 30, you might consider coming to New Zealand and relief teaching.
Just wanted to say again that the Ministry and Kiwi students welcome all teachers from overseas who will help enrich their lives with the culture that you bring with you.
Thank you for joining us at a busy time in your working day and have a good afternoon. Kia ora.
There are a few things you can do before you arrive in New Zealand, including applying for a New Zealand bank account and an IRD (tax identification) number. You can find some practical tips on the New Zealand immigration website.
Your overseas teaching qualification needs to be approved and recognised by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA).
You will need an International Qualification Assessment (IQA) to show your qualification is comparable to a New Zealand ITE qualification. The pre-approved list of overseas qualifications was disestablished in December 2024.
International Qualification Assessment – NZQA
Your qualification will be assessed as quickly as possible if you provide verified qualification documents.
Our initiative that allowed teachers to have their overseas teaching qualifications assessed for free by NZQA has ended. There are currently no plans to reintroduce this initiative.
There are language competency requirements you need to meet before you register as a teacher in New Zealand. Check to see if you meet the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand’s language competency requirements.
To enter the teaching profession in New Zealand you need to register as a teacher and apply for a practising certificate with the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Apply for registration and certification – Teaching Council
Please note, if you have received an employment offer to teach at a New Zealand school, kura or early childhood centre, let the Teaching Council know. It is a priority to get teachers registered and certified when they have a definite job offer.
There is currently high demand for teachers in New Zealand, including:
- secondary school teachers for subjects including sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics
- teachers in remote or rural regions
- teachers of te reo Māori and teachers in Kaupapa Māori/Māori-medium settings
- relief teachers.
You can learn more about teaching opportunities across New Zealand on the Education Gazette.
Early childhood jobs can be listed in the Education Gazette but can also be listed on independent job sites such as Seek.
You may also want to use a recruitment agency to help you in your search for finding a job.
Jobs for partners and family
If your partner or children want to look for roles, the careers.govt.nz job vacancy and recruitment webpage has a list of job sites in the geographical and work areas available.
To live and work in New Zealand, you must have a valid work visa. You must apply for your visa through Immigration NZ. There are several visas for different circumstances and occupations. Information about the different visas and how to apply is available on the Immigration New Zealand website.
Primary and secondary teachers from overseas are eligible to apply for a ‘straight to residence’ visa. This means you can apply for a visa before you move if you have a job offer from an accredited employer.
Straight to Residence Visa – Immigration NZ
Early childhood teachers from overseas are eligible for a ‘work to residence’ visa. You must be working for, or have a job offer from, an accredited employer. Your employment or offer must be full-time, and permanent or fixed-term for at least 12 months.
Work to Residence – Immigration NZ
If you are wanting to take a working holiday as a teacher in New Zealand, you may be eligible for a working holiday visa. Working holiday visas are available to travellers, usually aged 18 to 30, but 18 to 35 in a select few countries. The visa lets you travel and work in New Zealand for up to 12 months.
For pay purposes, you and your school will need to complete your salary assessment with Education Payroll. This includes providing recognition of relevant work from your previous educational employers.
As an overseas-trained teacher coming to New Zealand, you may be eligible for the grant which covers relocation costs of up to NZD$10,000.
Professional learning & development and mentorship
Teaching in a different education system means you will have a lot to learn about how the system works. There will also be cultural differences to understand, such as the Māori practices and language that we use in schools and kura. That’s why we offer to help you make a smooth transition to teaching in New Zealand.
Professional learning and development is important as it enables you to grow and thrive. We have a network of regionally allocated professional learning and development facilitators and providers. See our PLD site for more information.
Professional Learning & Development – Ministry of Education
One of our PLD providers, Tātai Aho Rau Core Education, provides professional learning and development support for beginning teachers, including overseas-trained teachers with provisional certification.
Go to the Tātai Aho Rau Core Education website for more information on this programme. You can also view an introductory webinar, which outlines future PLD offerings.
When you first move here, you will be allocated a mentor to support you during your transition to our system. Depending on your teaching area you will get a time allowance of 10 weeks for primary, intermediate and special schools, while composite (years 7-10) and secondary schools will get 20 weeks.
Popular Resources
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Guide for overseas teachers moving to New Zealand [PDF, 231 KB]
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Checklist for overseas teachers applying to teach in NZ [PDF, 47 KB]
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International Qualification Assessment – NZQA
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Registration and certification – Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand
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Vacancies – Education Gazette
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Salary assessment – EdPay
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