Words & Photographs by Bex Howells (She/Her)
Student life isn’t all drinking and socialising. Certainly not on StudyLink’s meagre offerings. In the current rental market and cost-of-living crisis, many of us are more familiar with poverty than partying. We’re not a demographic that receives a lot of empathy from the general public; that doesn’t mean we deserve to live in damp, mouldy accommodation, ‘grateful’ for what we might have in the future. Being poor, sick, and hungry does nothing to help educational attainment. Poverty is not a rite of passage.
As the future workforce of Aotearoa (or Australia, let’s be honest), it is in everyone’s interest that we receive quality education and training. Students are the future workforce. They are the next generation of teachers, healthcare, and mental health professionals, among other sectors too. Politicians across the spectrum have acknowledged the urgent need to grow these workforces yet, so far, have committed nothing to make it happen. Instead, they have changed immigration settings in the hopes of incentivising already qualified professionals to move here. It’s a quicker, cheaper solution than investing in your own, but with global shortages in these sectors, overseas recruitment is not a long-term solution.
Training a homegrown workforce seems an obvious solution, but there are major barriers to entering these professions. Students often need good grades, a driver’s licence, and the confidence to compete for limited entry programs before they even begin.
Then there’s unpaid placements. Hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of compulsory unpaid labour to train in short-staffed professions. You’d think NZ would be rolling out the red carpet to get people through the door. Instead, students pay fees to work for free, all while paying for travel expenses, uniforms, immunisations, and double rent for away placements out of their very empty pockets. Unsurprisingly, there is a huge cost to unpaid placements—mentally, physically, and financially. This form of hardship is known as ‘placement poverty.’
Each year, 21,000 healthcare students collectively undertake 11.6 million hours of unpaid labour. Many of those students are going without the bare necessities—secure housing, food, heating, medication. Some even report sleeping in cars and sheds. Placement poverty, suffering, and sacrifice have become unofficial pre-requisites to qualifying. It’s not healthy or sustainable. We should not have to martyr ourselves to prove we are worthy of earning a basic income. We are students, humans, who deserve to live with dignity in education and training.
This issue was first on my radar in 2020 when I was working as a youth worker training to be a social worker—in the middle of a pandemic to boot. I was looking forward to developing my skills on placement, until the coordinator announced that we were expected to be on placement 40 hours per week, unpaid. I asked the coordinator how I might sustain myself while working full-time, for free. His advice was ‘go to your local food bank’. The expectation that I would ‘suffer for my art’ did not sit right with me. The Code of Ethics in any registered profession is underpinned by the ‘Do No Harm principle.’ Treat people with dignity and respect and advocate for system change to address inequities. Yet, somehow, students are exempt from receiving the same level of care.
The irony that I might need to rely on the same services as my social work clients was not lost on me. I refused to comply and dropped out of the program, but I could not let the issue of unpaid placements go. I could see how overburdened my peers were in training. They were social work trainees by day and Uber drivers or bartenders by night. Their evenings and weekends were full of assignments and barely a minute to rest, let alone any resources to take care of themselves. I could see the toll it was taking.
The injustice of unpaid training—in female-dominated professions—kept whirring around in my brain. I attended an event hosted by a seasoned campaigner who said, “activism is the antidote to despair.” She was right. Apathy is the death of change, and ruminating on the issue was getting me nowhere. I’d never run a campaign before. I’d never launched a petition. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was going to do something.
It started with research. I returned to Te Herenga Waka to do a Master of Social Policy thesis on student experiences of unpaid clinical placements. Alongside my Masters, I set up Paid Placements Aotearoa (PPA) to create a space for students to share their stories and have their voices heard with the protection of anonymity of the platform.
The stories students shared with me between my thesis and the PPA platform were harrowing. Housing insecurity, skipping meals, relying on foodbanks, anxiety, depression, burnout, even suicidality. Mature students feeling guilty for missing out on time with their children and not having the resources for school uniforms, or school trips. Sleep deprivation from having to juggle unpaid placements, ongoing study commitments, and paid work on top. All this to train in professions that would never pay well enough to recoup the debt from training. I realised New Zealand had built a system entirely dependent on people’s desire to serve others. No contractual obligations, no remuneration, just good will.
For many, it understandably becomes too much. Up to 40hrs a week on placement, ongoing study commitments, and paid work make 80-hour weeks far too common. Students are burning out and dropping out at rates of up to 37% in nursing, 42% in midwifery, and 45% in social work. Those who do complete training are exhausted and riddled in debt. This system incentivises people to move overseas for better-paid jobs in order to pay off their huge student loans. We are losing our trainees and graduates at an alarming rate. The current system is doing little to address chronic staff shortages in our essential services. This system is failing all of us—students and professionals under the pump, and members of the community unable to access the services they need, when they need them.
We need to rethink the way we train people in these highly skilled, highly qualified professions. For sustainable, long-term workforce development, we must incentivise (read: remunerate!) people to train in these professions. This is not a new idea. These programs used to be paid vocational on-the-job training programs. This is about leveling the playing field of employment opportunities to create fair access for all. If it seems like a pipedream, let’s take an example of paid training in action.
Police recruits spend five months at Police college, and are provided food and accommodation during that time. They earn $52k/year during this period and then start on $67k/year, as a probationary (still in training) officer. No student loan, no debt, no paid work on the side to survive. Since 2017, the Police force has increased the number of officers by 21%. The workforce is the most diverse it has ever been with more women, Māori, and Pasifika officers than ever before. The dropout rate from Police training over the last five years has averaged 1.5%. A stark difference from 45% in social work. Paid training can be done because it is being done and it works.
If we can afford to pay Police, prison officers, and the military to train, there must be funding to pay healthcare, teaching, and mental health students too. Our advocacy is in response to global calls to reinstate paid training from the United Nations and European Parliament. [EU Quality Traineeships report: “traineeships that are part of mandatory professional training should have the right to remuneration.”] Australia announced that it will be introducing means-tested paid placements in July 2025. Aotearoa New Zealand must respond to this global call to action.
In January 2024, Paid Placements Aotearoa launched a petition for paid training in healthcare, education, and social work. We are calling for students to be paid a universal, annually increasing stipend to reflect the year-on-year increase in placement hours, skill development, and responsibilities.
It would be paid through StudyLink on a fortnightly basis, just as students currently receive student allowance or living costs. Most importantly, this money is non-repayable. This campaign is about dignity, diversity, and equity. Students must be able to meet their basic needs so training is the priority, rather than survival. Alleviating placement poverty will unlock so much potential by making training accessible to a more diverse range of people. We want to enable equity in access to education and training, and improve access to services for whānau & community. Paid training is a win for us all.
On 28 May, Paid Placements Aotearoa delivered its 16,350 strong petition to Parliament. It was received by Hon. Jan Tinetti, Labour Spokesperson for Education and Women. The petition has support from NZ First, and the Green Party. The petition delivery was a huge milestone and a moment to celebrate—but there is more work to be done to make paid training the norm again. If you are interested in following Paid Placements Aotearoa’s ongoing advocacy, you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
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