Report by MMW sub-editor David Blocksidge (who is also Mazlinah’s husband)

Mazlinah and I came to New Zealand for an exploratory trip in December 2008 and liked what we saw. We settled in Auckland in autumn 2009.

The New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) approved Mazlinah’s overseas qualifications at Level 7 (degree level). The Teachers’ Council (now the Teaching Council) issued her with a full practising certificate.

Despite many applications in 2009/2010, only a couple of interviews resulted and there were no job offers.

She did some relief teaching, including a week at New Lynn Primary School, which Mazlinah feels was not a coincidence as the principal, Greg Roebuck, had attended education conferences in Singapore and admired that country’s pedagogy.

In mid-2010, through networking in the Muslim community, she was introduced to Asin Ali, the principal of Al-Madinah School in Auckland, a State-integrated School of a Special Character for Muslim students. (State-integrated means they teach the NZ Curriculum.) He employed her and she taught Y0–Y2 from July 2010 to August 2017.

Keen on professional development, Mazlinah gained the Incredible Years for Teachers Certificate (awarded by the Ministry of Education and Incredible Years NZ) in 2013 and the following year was awarded a Certificate in Reading Recovery from the University of Auckland.

In 2015, Mazlinah became a New Zealand citizen – a demonstration of loyalty since she had to renounce her Singaporean citizenship in order to become a Kiwi because Singapore does not permit dual citizenship.

Portable skills

In February 2017, we visited Wellington for the first time and fell in love with the city.

Believing we both had portable skills, she sought work there and after many applications was offered a fixed-term position from August to December 2017, teaching new entrants at Johnsonville School.

When that contract ended she received a good written reference, as she has from other employers.

Her goal then, like that of most teachers, was a stable permanent position. She applied for these as well as fixed-term positions, meanwhile making herself available for relief teaching work.

Pattern emerging

By 2019, a pattern was emerging. Mazlinah was applying only for positions for which she was well qualified – Y0 to Y3 jobs, mainly – yet had been offered very few interviews for fixed-term positions and even fewer for permanent jobs.

I started keeping records and Mazlinah emailed schools politely asking why she had not been shortlisted and what she could do to improve her future chances.

Someone we met in November 2019, who wishes to remain anonymous, is very high in the educational establishment. They made useful suggestions for fine-tuning Mazlinah’s CV but could not offer a solution.

On 15 December 2020, I wrote, “We believe a toxic combination of unconscious bias, Islamophobia and racism is preventing my wife from even being shortlisted, let alone offered a job. It's an uncomfortable and widely unacknowledged side to a country we love.”

The same day they replied (in part): “I really have no suggestions. It does make me think the reasons you suggest are correct.”

“I can’t go on record”

In a 19 January 2021 email, after I asked them to go public about this, they said, “I can’t go on record as I would be the centre point of the story and my bosses [at the university] would take me to the works.”

We approached the media. Lincoln Tan wrote a report for the New Zealand Herald on 18 July 2021.

Days later, TV3 interviewed Mazlinah in our home for their current affairs programme, The Project. Their host ended the interview by turning to camera and asking, “Why are teachers being brought in from overseas when local ones like Mazlinah cannot get a job?”

Qualifications are not the issue. As well as the New Zealand qualifications, Mazlinah gained a BA (Hons) in English Language and Literature from the UK Open University in 2008 and diplomas in Art Education from two respected overseas tertiary institutions.

She had been teaching the New Zealand Curriculum for 12 years, has three decades’ experience teaching primary levels, is accustomed to collaborative as well as solo teaching, and her Practising Certificate is up to date and unblemished. She has good written references.

“There has been plenty of investigation locally into unconscious bias in the classroom,” she says, “but nobody seems willing to address the elephant in the room – unconscious bias, at the very least, in recruiting teachers.”

Many primary school websites highlight the ethnic diversity among their students. Diversity generally stops at the staffroom door, however.

Barriers to employment

As a Muslim, Mazlinah wears the mandatory head scarf (hijab) outside the home. An Office of Ethnic Communities report issued in June 2020 stated that this is “… considered an additional barrier to employment.”

This is Mazlinah’s experience at one interview. She walked into the room and approached the panel. One of the women looked up, saw Mazlinah and immediately rolled her eyes.

Whether it was the hijab or Mazlinah’s Asian ethnicity that had irked her was unclear but Mazlinah knew then she would not get the job. Wanting to remain professional, she continued with the interview as if nothing had happened.

There are other barriers. There is no surname in her patronymic culture, which often needs explaining and is rarely allowed for in job application forms. Her full name is Mazlinah binte Haji Mohamad Noor and she could not apply under a different name – Mrs Mazlinah Blocksidge, for instance – because application forms invariably ask the applicant if they have ever been known by any other name. In any event, such a name change is discouraged in Islam.

Application forms can be a problem in other ways. Some schools want to know applicants’ age, ethnicity and other details. The Ministry of Education has been informed in writing several times about specific offending schools but said it is the responsibility of individual schools’ Boards of Trustees to rectify the forms.

HRC guidelines are clear

It is a fine line but Human Rights Commission (HRC) written guidelines are clear: “Where such information [as race, ethnicity, gender and age] is required, it should be made clear to candidates that EEO [Equal Employment Opportunity] information will not be used to discriminate against them.

"Employers should distinguish clearly between questions which will be used in job selection and questions put for EEO purposes. EEO information should be collected on a voluntary basis. Ideally, EEO questions should not appear on the application form but should be collected separately and anonymously.”

A school in Porirua is one of many that conflated their application form with the EEO form. At the time Mazlinah applied, they asked gender, marital status, date of birth and ethnic origin.

Their EEO form also required applicants to say what position they were applying for and to provide a summary of their suitability for it. The applicant had to agree that all this information could be shared with the appointments committee and could go in your personnel file if you were appointed.

“If you leave blanks in forms, your application will likely not even be considered,” Mazlinah says, “so you feel pressured into responding.”

Some schools encourage applicants to visit the school before submitting a formal application. In November 2020, a school in Lower Hutt advertised a fixed-term job for 2021. Mazlinah made an appointment to visit them on Wednesday 25 November. The principal did not make himself available despite having notice of her visit, and she met with a teacher instead. Next day, the 26th, she submitted her application.

The following day, 27 November, the principal emailed: “Good Evening, Really sorry I did not get to meet with you on Wednesday. Thank you for popping up to school. Unfortunately this time the job went to a person with more experience in the Junior School.”

This is unlikely, as at that point Mazlinah had nearly 30 years’ experience in junior schools, as he would have known from her CV.

The closing date for applications for that job was 3 December so presumably applications could still be made and would be considered until that date. Had the principal made up his mind that he didn’t want to interview Mazlinah on the basis of whatever the teacher said to him?

When Mazlinah asked afterwards why she was not considered, other schools have made similar claims about successful candidates having greater experience.

She applied for a permanent Y1/2 position at a Lower Hutt school but was not shortlisted and got this email: “We received a very strong field of applicants, the interviewees had more experience in the classroom and in the year group specified than was shown on your CV.”

The second paragraph of Mazlinah’s application letter stated: “I am well suited to teaching a Y1/2 class, having taught at this level for long periods of time. In all my years of experience – ten years teaching the NZ Curriculum and a wealth of prior experience – I have retained a passion for teaching the young ones.”

Mazlinah believes principals were discounting her seven years teaching Y0 to Y2 at Auckland’s Al-Madinah School because it is a school for Muslims.

Her CV makes it clear that as a State-integrated school they teach the NZ Curriculum and are no different in that respect to, for example, St Cuthbert’s College, a highly-rated Christian school in Auckland where Mazlinah relieved on many occasions.

On 22 July 2021, I made a formal complaint against the Ministry of Education on behalf of my wife to the HRC on the grounds of institutional discrimination in the hiring of primary school teachers. HRC took up the case and on 29 October 2021 they wrote formally to the Ministry of Education seeking their response and offering mediation.

Our first mediation meeting was in the HRC’s Wellington office on 14 July 2022. The next one was on 16 September. Those present at either or both meetings included: Tim Tucker, a Ministry of Education lawyer; Rachel Evans, a senior Ministry of Education official; Anna Welanyk, Deputy-Secretary, Education Workforce, Ministry of Education; Cherie Taylor Patel, National President of the NZ Principals Federation; Stephanie Mills and Bella Pardoe of the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI, the biggest teachers’ union); Lorraine Kerr, then president of the New Zealand School Trustees Association (NZSTA), and NZSTA Industrial Advisor Kate Lethbridge; HRC mediators Alex Goodall and Stacey O’Neill.

Also present, on HRC’s recommendation, were our two support people. Both have an education background and are Muslims whose presence and contributions proved invaluable.

Robina Dean was the founding principal of Zayed College for Girls in Auckland and at the time of our meetings was teaching in Wellington primary schools.

Christchurch resident and author Anthony Green was for 10 years Head of English at the highly respected Raffles Institution in Singapore.

Mazlinah and I had prepared an opening address detailing her experiences over the years. There was considerable sympathy for her situation from all, and empathy from Kerr, a Māori who told us she had changed her own name years before in order to “fit in” better.

HRC were able to take the case only on the basis that Mazlinah as an individual had been wronged. However, we were able to broaden the conversation and cite other examples of discrimination among people we knew.

Ultimately there was general agreement that there is a problem within education and that it is systemic. Mazlinah was not alone.

Those present agreed that it was highly unlikely statistically for what had happened to Mazlinah to have been chance. In the five years between December 2017 and December 2022, she had submitted applications for 147 fixed-term positions generating 15 interviews and 235 permanent positions generating seven interviews.

She worked on fixed-term contracts for 11 out of the 20 school terms in that period, and did a total of a few extra weeks of relief teaching.

All this was happening against a backdrop of an ongoing teacher shortage.

On 30 June 2022, Amelia Wade reported for Newshub that severe teaching shortages and a huge surge in winter illnesses were forcing schools to close. Her story was headlined “Principals want changes to bureaucratic rigmarole schools face when hiring teachers from overseas”.

A couple of months later, RNZ headlined a report, “Government spends $24 million on recruitment schemes aiming to bring in 1000 teachers”.

Our written documentation for the meetings included proposals for action and reform. By the time of our second meeting, Tim Tucker had designed from scratch an application form for schools to use, and we had an opportunity to provide feedback on this. (Random checks by me since its release show very few schools are using the new form.) There was talk of rolling out unconscious bias training.

If change seems slow, it is likely due to two factors: bureaucracy in New Zealand as elsewhere works slowly; each school is effectively independent, answerable primarily to its own Board of Trustees.

Part of the problem is how few people from ethnic minorities enter teaching training. Māori and Pacific people are significantly under-represented in teacher training, and therefore ultimately as teachers, but Asians are worse: they are about 15% of the general population yet only 5% of trainee teachers are Asian.

We suggested the Ministry of Education run a campaign to redress the balance, citing the success NZ Police had with their own relatively inexpensive campaign a few years ago.

On page 32 in volume 1 of the Royal Commission Report into the Christchurch shootings, the authors recommend Government – of which the Ministry of Education is de facto an arm – to “encourage the Public Service Commissioner to continue focusing efforts on significantly increasing workforce diversity… .” The report recognises the value that ethnic and religious diversity can contribute to a well-functioning society.

New Zealand’s loss

Events overtook the process we had become involved in. In December 2022, a former colleague of Mazlinah’s alerted her to a vacancy in the school she had moved to since the two of them had worked together in Auckland. Mazlinah submitted her CV.

On Tuesday 31 January, she had a Zoom interview. On Thursday 2 February, she received an email congratulating her and asking her to join the school the next week.

She joined them on 15 February, after we had arranged our move to Melbourne, where Mazlinah has settled in well at her new school teaching a Year 2 class.

“New Zealand’s loss is Australia’s gain,” said a Jewish friend of ours.

Also see:

Lack of diversity in schools

Revealing attitudes

Another barrier to being interviewed