Welcome to to our Migrant Tales series – first hand accounts of the migrant experience of New Zealand taken from places around the net.
Today’s tale was recently published on a teaching overseas forum.
My sincere advice to you, and anyone else reading the forum, is DO NOT go to New Zealand. As an ‘immigrant’ teacher you will suffer discrimination and social exclusion.
Whatever your qualifications and experience you will not be welcome. New Zealand teachers coming to England can apply immediately for full QTS. You will not be able to do this in NZ . You will be given Provisional Registration with the Teaching Council and many an obstacle will be put in your way to Full Registration if you are not a ‘Kiwi’.
New Zealand is portrayed as being clean, green and friendly. It is nothing of the sort. It is a 3rd World dog-eat-dog society with poor salaries, expensive prices for everything and a poor but expensive housing stock, mostly uninsulated (the winters are COLD) Nepotism and racism, both overt and covert, are rampant as is child poverty and abuse. Violent crime is common and there is a gang culture that the authorities cannot control or eradicate.
The clean green image is deliberately promoted by the NZ government to attract tourists, an important source of income for a poor country. I have just returned from the North Island after 4 years. I went on my partner’s visa as she had been offered a job. In the first 12 months I applied for teaching posts galore and the most common excuse given for not being hired was that I lacked ‘New Zealand experience’ (despite 25 years experience in UK and overseas). In the end I gave up. If you want the truth about NZ read the forums at “e2nz.org” and the now closed but archived and highly enlightning “expat exposed”.
E2NZ.org 
Yes. It comes from the Times Educational Supplement forum and is spot on. I see someone, probably a ‘Kiwi’, has responded on the TES forum that he/she does not understand the author’s point and that talking about social exclusion is ridiculous. In that case refer to “The Experience of Discrimination Social Exclusion by Immigrants and Refugees in New Zealand” by Andrew Butcher, Paul Spoonley and Andrew Trlin. Palmerston North, NZ.: New Settlers Programme, Massey University, 2006. You might gain some enlightenment if you are not ‘Kiwi’. If you are Kiwi, persevere with the big words, with the help of a good dictionary you’ll understand the article eventually. For confirmation that NZ is a 3rd World country look at the OECD statistics (not through Statistics NZ webpage – they extrapolate the good and ignore the bad as part of NZ Government’s ‘Clean, Green, beautiful country bullshit). Go here http://www.oecd.org/els/family for a comparison of NZ with 29 other OECD countries. NZ – Infant Mortality 21/30; Children material well-being 21/30; Child poverty 20/30; Child risk behaviours (smoking, drunkenness, teen pregnancy) 24/30; Child health and safety 29/30; Teen (15-19) suicide rate 30/30. Nice place to live and bring up your kids – Yeah, right.
Poh, I hope to goodness you have left! After all you went through.
I do not know how you find teaching jobs there. My children were in the system, and based on what they told me, of the behaviour of their peers, I wouldn’t want to teach. It is true that the Kiwis prefer to keep their jobs for “their own”, but there is the occasional gap, because I have seen foreign teachers here and there, almost always from the UK, and very rarely North American. Foreign doctors are extremely common, on the other hand. I think it depends also on the geographic and academic area, for instance in secondary you will see science and math teacher positions open more frequently, and the very rural and poor regions may need more teachers.