Manurewa High School’s hallways emptied earlier than normal on a Friday afternoon in late May. Under a gray South Auckland sky, students filed out; some went directly to the waiting cars, while others wandered in the direction of the bus stops close to the school gates. Under supervision, the younger students—those under the age of fourteen—stayed behind and waited out the final hours of the school week. It was neither a planned event nor a fire drill. To put it simply, it was a school that had run out of adults.
On that particular day, twenty-nine employees were not present. The school usually has ten to fifteen students on a typical Friday. It’s difficult not to interpret the leadership team’s decision to cancel regular classes for the afternoon at lunchtime as a covert acknowledgement of a more serious issue. The school claimed that although its employees were “working above and beyond” to cover lessons, the situation had become unsustainable in a Facebook post that has since gone viral. When it comes from a principal’s office instead of a union press release, the word “unsustainable” carries a lot of weight.
Absences at Manurewa High have been steadily increasing over the last two weeks, averaging between twenty and twenty-five per day. Up to twenty-five more classes were allegedly being covered by teachers. Anyone who has worked in a staffroom in New Zealand during the winter knows the routine: one coworker contracts the flu, another takes over their Year 10 English class during a free period, and by the end of the week, half the department is operating on coffee and adrenaline. That pattern seems to have been stretched far beyond its breaking point by what is happening at Manurewa.
Beneath this one lies a larger narrative. The teacher shortage in New Zealand has been discussed for years, sometimes in alarming terms and other times in the more subdued language of policy reviews. In many areas, the availability of relievers in particular has decreased. There are issues that go far beyond a single winter virus when a school the size of Manurewa High, one of the biggest in the nation, is unable to gather enough warm bodies to cover its schedule.
It’s important to consider the type of school this is. Manurewa High is located in a neighborhood that has long been regarded as one of South Auckland’s more challenging places to teach, whether this is true or not. The school itself has established a reputation for perseverance, for turning out students like its highly acclaimed Future Problem Solvers team, and for firmly adhering to its core values of respect, excellence, whanaungatanga, and akoranga. It is more difficult to ignore the larger systemic story when a location like that hits a wall.
As of this writing, the Ministry of Education has not made many public statements. School excursions and off-site trades programs went on as scheduled on Friday, indicating that the closure was more logistical than safety-related. Even so, parents who picked up their children early were left wondering what would happen the following week. And the following week? In Auckland, winter typically peaks in June and July rather than May.
This type of story comes with a certain kind of frustration. It’s not overly dramatic. Nobody was harmed. No political flashpoint, no scandal, and no resignation. Just a school that discreetly admitted it couldn’t continue for an additional two hours. Maybe that’s why it’s important to pay attention to. Public service crises seldom start out as explosions. More often than not, they resemble a Manurewa Friday lunchtime, with teenagers arriving home an hour early and posting an explanation on Facebook.
What transpires in the coming weeks will determine whether this is a turning point or just another data point. As of right now, the school has taken the only possible action. What the rest of the system intends to do about it is the more difficult question.
