[KiwiHopeful]

I know. I saw that and, believe me, it didn't make me happy at all--not just for myself, but for this poor girl as well. From what I understand, with these young teachers, schools need to find an experienced teacher on staff to mentor them during their first *two* years teaching here ... and it keeps the mentor teacher out of their own classroom very frequently. So, of course, schools don't want to hire that kind of problem--and even if they do, they might not have enough experienced staff to help their new teachers.

I give NZ credit for doing something at least. In the US, our problem is with teacher retention. About 1/3 of all teachers leave the profession after the first year, and 1/2 leave within 5 years. We've tried to tackle it on the education school side--tightening the requirements, requiring more time in the classroom during prep programs--and offering mentoring to new teachers during their first year. This has helped somewhat, but a big part of the problem is the poor pay.

It seems that what NZ is dealing with is what we've found in the US--mentoring takes time, time, and more time.