Budget 2025: Education's $2.5b boost - Where the money is going
The death of the scheme from January next year leaves around $375m for the school learning reform.
A teachers union fears much of the funding for the education boost has come from the $12.8b saved by tightening up the pay equity scheme, calling it 'tainted money'.
Education Minister Erica Stanford called it the biggest boost in a generation for learning support after years of 'pittance'.
'Teachers, I've heard what they've been telling me for the last 18 months – of the overwhelming nature of having so many children, and there are an increasing number of them, with additional learning needs.
'We don't have the teacher aide support, the specialist support, the speech language therapists, the educational psychologists that they need. We are now making sure those supports will be available.'
The PPTA, an education union, finds the gains bittersweet, deploring the funding of education with 'tainted money' that was set aside to fund pay equity claims for hundreds of thousands of workers.
'It will be a constant reminder of the depths this Government is prepared to stoop to, to pay for unaffordable promises it made to win power,' union president Chris Abercrombie said.
Around $36m in funding has been moved from one cluster of Māori education initiatives to another.
The new Māori education package includes a training scheme to help teachers learn te reo, which comes after the Government cut a similar $30m scheme last year.
It also includes the development of a 'te ao Māori learning area' and a 'virtual learning network' to plug gaps in teacher supply at wharekura and secondary schools.
The Budget 2025 education package includes:
$266m to extend the Early Intervention Service (EIS) from early childhood education to the end of year 1 of primary school. This will fund more than 560 additional FTE for EIS teachers and specialists.
$122m to meet increased capacity of the ORS.
$192m to put Learning Support Co-ordinator in all Year 1-8 schools and kura.
$43m for an extra 78.5 FTE speech language therapists and additional psychologists and supporting teacher-aide hours.
$4m for 25 intern educational psychologists annually.
$90m of capital for approximately 25 new learning support satellite classrooms.
Principal Infometrics economist Brad Olsen supported the funding boost, saying it would help these young people fulfil their potential as they became adults.
'It's clearly an area of need. Perhaps we really were underfunding it effectively for a longer period of time than we should have.
'These are people with a bit more support, with a bit more targeted support, can really start to fulfil their potential a lot more.'
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