Education Minister Hekia Parata says the teacher shortage isn't a crisis and a plan is in place to stop it becoming one.

Kiwi teachers living abroad will be actively recruited to come home and help relieve the teacher shortage some schools are calling a "crisis", Education Minister Hekia Parata says.

The Government will announce on Friday a roll-out of a $9 million package that includes a raft of new initiatives to fill the almost 4000 teacher vacancies in core subject areas.

"This isn't a crisis, it's a shortage, but for the schools experiencing the shortage they can feel like it's a crisis," Parata said.

"This occurs whenever there's a good economy because the opportunity to get other jobs, and stretch your wings and all of those things happen. When the economy is tight, like through the GFC, there are very few vacancies because people want to be secure and have a job."

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The Government will offer an extra 100 Teach NZ Scholarships worth $1.8m per year for science, technology and maths (STM) subjects to lift the number of graduates in these areas where shortages are particularly prevalent.

There will also be an intensive recruitment programme, the budget of which will extend from $220,000 to $1 million, to focus on bringing Kiwi teachers home and luring overseas teachers.

A pool of 200 overseas teachers who would like to work in New Zealand in STM subjects are already being worked with, Parata said.

On top of that, the Government will for the first time invest in promoting teaching as a career to tertiary students studying in STM subjects.

"This will begin immediately, in time to reach those completing their qualifications this year and thinking about their next steps," Parata said.

Inspirational Kiwis, including "Nanogirl Michelle Dickinson, making science cool...and Rod Drury, taking Xero from New Zealand to the world" are having an impact on the "upsurge in students wanting to study STM subjects".

That's fuelling the need for more teachers in those areas and given the Government's "invested gazillions in science and innovation" the upsurge is a good thing, she said.

In conjunction with the Auckland Primary Principals Association the Government is also taking the rare step of investing nearly $1m to employ 40 teachers, through to full registration, specifically for the country's largest city.

This comes at the same time some school principals struggling to fill teaching positions have resorted to buying houses for staff as a last ditch attempt to offset the impact of the housing crisis in Auckland.

Parata said her focus was on the supply of teachers and she has no plans to provide housing or an Auckland teacher's salary to one group of teachers, which "would create an inequity".

"The net turnover of teachers in Auckland is not very high so the argument that it's difficult to attract or keep teachers is not supported by the evidence as an over-arching problem," she said.

The newly formed Education Council would also look at issues around teachers struggling to get their full practicing certificate because they're not being permanently employed in schools.

Earlier this month Parata also announced an extension to Teach First, a programme that fast-tracks graduates into low deciles schools - another measure designed to ease teacher supply issues.

"While there's no one silver bullet, these initiatives will help to ease pressure," she said.