Education Minister Erica Stanford. Photo: Samuel Rillstone / RNZ
The 2025 Budget puts the handbrake on annual growth in education spending, as past splurges on school buildings run out in the next few years.
Despite that, spending on teaching and learning continues to grow with what the government describes as a "seismic shift" in support for children with disabilities.
Education Minister Erica Stanford said new education initiatives in the Budget totalled $2.5 billion over four years, though about $614m of that total was reprioritised from "underperforming" initiatives.
The government's total spend on early childhood and school education would grow by roughly $400m to $19.85b in 2025-26, but drop to $19b and $18.9b in subsequent years.
The future decline was partly due to the fact the $240m a year free school lunch programme, Ka Ora, Ka Ako, was only funded until the end of 2026, and to a $600m drop in capital funding by 2027-28 and beyond.
The Budget revealed education's worst-kept secret - the axing of the major school-clustering scheme, Kahui Ako, to help bankroll a $720m increase for learning support.
The increase included $266m to extend the early intervention service from early childhood through to the end of Year 1 of primary school, including employing 560 more early intervention teachers and specialists and helping an additional 4000 children.
It also included $192m over three years to provide learning support coordinators in 1250 more primary schools, $122m to meet increased demand for the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme for students with the highest needs, and $90m to build 25 new satellite classrooms for specialist schools.
Stanford said the government was building up to adding 2 million extra teacher aide hours by 2028.
The other big education initiative in the Budget was $298m for curriculum, nearly half of it targeted to maths and literacy, and about $76m for a new standardised reading, writing and maths test for schools.
Other areas of spending included $672m for property, $150m for the teaching workforce, $104m for Māori education, and $140m for attendance, which was announced prior to the Budget.
School operations grants received a 1.5 percent boost at a cost of $79m per full year, or $121.7m over the four years.
The Budget total included $3b a year for early childhood education, with a 0.5 percent increase to early childhood service subsidies.
The Budget included an 11 percent increase to government subsidies for private schools, raising the annual spend by $4.6m to $46.2m a year.
Associate Education Minister David Seymour said the annual spend on private schools had not changed since 2010, when they had about 27,600 pupils - and they now had more than 33,000.
The annual spend on charter schools also doubles next year to $57m, most of it for those operating as secondary schools, with the increase largely due to the drawdown of funding for setting up the schools.
The Budget showed the government expected to sign contracts for 30 to 50 charter schools in the next 12 months.
The cuts
The Budget included a myriad of cuts to redirect funding to other education initiatives.
"We have assessed underspends and reprioritised initiatives that are underperforming or lack clear evidence that they're delivering intended outcomes," Stanford said.
The biggest cut was ending the Kahui Ako scheme, which paid about 4000 teachers extra to lead improvements in groups of schools, resulting in a reprioritisation of $375m over four years.
The Budget repurposed spending of $72m over four years on programmes for kura kaupapa and Māori-medium education. However, half of it came from a contingency fund that was superseded by another source of money, meaning the sector was not suffering a cut from that part of the change.
It also reprioritised $50m from schools' regional response fund, about $40m from resource teachers of literacy, and $14m from resource teachers of learning and behaviour in secondary schools.
Also repurposed was about $37m from underspent funding on primary schools and $12m from the Positive Behaviour for Learning scheme for schools.
A new $24m per year spend on support for the maths curriculum was bankrolled from a $28m a year spend on teacher professional development.
Also cut was $2.6m a year for the Reading Together programme, $1.6m a year for study support centres and about $4m from the greater Christchurch renewal programme.
A further $2m a year was saved by cutting a classroom set-up and vandalism grant for schools.
The Budget said the net five-year impact of the funding cuts and increases was $1.69b.
Last year's Budget reprioritised $429m over four years.
Associate Education Minister David Seymour. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Tertiary funding rises
The Budget boosted the government's subsidies for enrolments in tertiary courses next year by 3 percent - but only in some subject areas such as science, teacher education and health - at a total cost of $213m over four years.
Enrolments in science, technology, engineering and maths (the STEM subjects) at degree-level and above would attract a further 1.75 percent, increase at a cost of $64m.
The Budget also included $111m over four years to cover expected enrolment growth in 2025 and 2026.
The government said it also proposed allowing tertiary institutes to raise the fees they charged domestic students by up to 6 percent next year "to further help providers manage cost pressures and maintain quality delivery".
Vocational Education Minister Penny Simmonds said there would also be funding for two years starting next year to help polytechnics transition to independence from mega-institute Te Pukenga. The figure was not specified.
There would also be $30m a year for the new Industry Skills Boards, which would replace Workforce Development Councils, plus one-off funding of $10m to help with establishment costs.
Overall tertiary spending would total $3.8b next year.
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