About to graduate?

 

Your teaching career - a guide to provisional registration

If you have recently graduated or are about to graduate from your initial teacher education (ITE) programme, congratulations.  This is a big achievement!

To help you navigate your first few years as a teacher, we've developed a one-stop resource designed to answer all your burning questions about applying for provisional registration, induction and mentoring programmes, the Registered Teacher Criteria and moving to full registration. 

To access this resource click on the link below:

Your teaching career - a guide to provisional registration 

  

Finding a teaching position

ITE graduates must seek their own teaching position by applying to the employing body or professional leader of the school, kura or early childhood education service. Some useful information can be found in the section for Registered Teachers: Finding employment as a teacher in New Zealand.

It is also important that you ensure that the employment position you are to be appointed to will enable you to meet the requirements to gain full registration. Your position needs to:

  • be a teaching position in the general education system, or a setting approved for gaining full registration 
  • provide multiple opportunities to demonstrate and meet the Registered Teacher Criteria
  • be 0.5 full time teacher equivalent (FTTE) or more 

Other factors to consider are that:

  • any short term teaching completed in blocks of less than six weeks will not be considered towards the requirements for gaining full registration 
  • your employment includes an established appraisal process against the Registered Teacher Criteria
  • your employer provides an induction and mentoring programme for beginning teachers - this must be based on the Guidelines for Induction and Mentoring and Mentor Teachers
  • your employer supports ongoing professional development and learning for teachers with an established and transparent policy as to how this operates and how it is resourced
  • provisional registration is limited to a maximum period of six years.  You will need to meet the requirements to gain full registration within this timeframe or complete a refresher programme to access a further practising certificate with provisional registration

For further information about the registration framework, see Section One, Part c: A Brief Overview of Teacher Registration in the Registration Policy.  You should also read about the requirements that apply to provisional registration and the requirements for gaining full registration, which are outlined in Section Two, Part b: Provisional Registration and Part c: Pathway to Gaining Full Registration of the Registration Policy.