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Otago Daily Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- Otago Daily Times
Concern unis will be weakened by focus on science
By John Gerritsen of RNZ Next year's funding boost for science courses and other associated subjects won't drive up enrolments in those fields, universities warn. They also calculate that the government's decision to increase funding for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects, but not for most other fields in 2026 is a net zero. That's because this year's Budget allowed an emergency two-year 4% funding boost to lapse. Craig Marshall, an associate professor at the University of Otago's School of Biomedical Sciences and a member of the Tertiary Education Union's council, told RNZ without a serious funding increase, universities would increasingly struggle to offer the research-informed teaching that defined them. The ongoing decline in funding compared to inflation could prove fatal, he believed. "I think it'll be incremental. You'll just see small losses here and there and everywhere else and at the end of it all it's very difficult to predict what that leads to, but perhaps the loss of a university." Marshall said the latest decisions meant universities would struggle to offer some humanities courses and students would start to vote with their feet. "What we're starting to see is students instead of coming to universities in New Zealand from school, they'll go to universities overseas. They see that as a better outcome. "Increasingly, students opt now for postgrad graduate training outside of New Zealand, rather than in New Zealand. Some of the universities will be weakened, some may be fatally weakened." Marshall agreed the government was unlikely to let a university to go under, but one or more could lose the ability to provide the research-informed teaching that fostered critical thought - in which case it would cease to be a university in all but name. Universities New Zealand chief executive Chris Whelan said the long-term trend for university funding was poor, but none of the eight institutions was close to failing. "It's becoming challenging to basically retain our position internationally. "We shouldn't care about things like international rankings, but the reality is they do send quite important signals to academic staff, to people that want to do research collaborations with New Zealand researchers and to international students," he said, referring to league tables in which New Zealand universities had been falling. "There is a tipping point where if funding got so low we were not able to maintain that quality, we would have a problem. But I don't think we're anywhere near that." However, Whelan said the net effect of last month's Budget was no increase to total university funding next year. That was about as good as the sector could have expected under the circumstances. But he said the government's decision to favour STEM subjects over humanities was mistaken. "It's an unfortunate message. There seems to be a belief that somehow universities, if they're given more funding for science, technology, engineering, maths-type subjects, can persuade students to drop doing the liberal arts or social sciences and shift across. "The reality is that's just not the case," he said. All fields of university study contributed to the skilled workforce the government said it wanted, he said. Universities minister Shane Reti told RNZ that was correct, but STEM subjects were more closely linked to productivity. "The message we're sending is that we're particularly investing and funding those courses that clearly have a pathway to productivity and economic gain and these are generally the science and the STEM subjects." Enrolments in those subjects had been increasing and the funding decision should encourage universities to increase the breadth and depth of their STEM programmes, Reti said, and universities were not sliding toward failure. "Across the sector, there are some who are doing well and some who are struggling and indeed have been struggling for some period of time and and are receiving extra attention support and monitoring from TEC (the Tertiary Education Commission). "But if we look at the big picture, there's a significant increase in student numbers this year... It's quite a change in trend from over the previous few years where student numbers have been falling away." The government had allocated $111m over the next two years to cover growing university enrolments, he said. He confirmed that the government had allocated enough funding to cover 99% of expected enrolments next year and the commission would be expected to cover the remainder from its reserves. Changing shares of the enrolment pie Ministry of Education Ministry show that sciences have lost ground against other subjects in terms of enrolments in Bachelors degrees in the past 10 years. Considered by predominant field of study, the percentage of students enrolled in the "natural and physical sciences" dropped from 14 to 13% between 2024 and 2015. Health enrolments rose from 17 to 20 percent while education, management and commerce, and the creative arts all dropped slightly. Predominant field of study for 120,995 domestic students enrolled in Bachelors degree programmes in 2024 and 127,705 in 2015. Subject in 2015 / in 2024 Sciences 14% / 13% IT 6% / 7% Engineering 3% / 3% Arch and building 2% / 3% Ag, environment 2% / 2% Health 17% / 20% Education 8%/ 7% Management, commerce 20% /18% Society and culture 33% / 33% Creative arts 11% / 10%
RNZ News
2 days ago
- Business
- RNZ News
Unis face uncertain future as funding fails to keep up
education about 1 hour ago Universities face an uncertain future as they contemplate yet another year in which funding fails to keep pace with rising costs. Here's our education correspondent John Gerritsen. Tags: To embed this content on your own webpage, cut and paste the following: See terms of use.
RNZ News
28-05-2025
- General
- RNZ News
Ministry of Education hunting for source of leaks to RNZ
The Education Ministry has appointed a Kings Counsel to hunt the source of a series of leaks to RNZ. The ministry wrote to RNZ to share an internal message announcing the investigation by Michael Heron KC. It also invited RNZ to meet with Mr Heron - an invitation we've refused. This happened just hours after we revealed that a Public Service Commission push to stop leaks was itself leaked to RNZ. John Gerritsen is our education correspondent.
Otago Daily Times
22-05-2025
- Business
- Otago Daily Times
'Underperforming' areas cut to pay for 'seismic shift' in education
By John Gerritsen of 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 myriad 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. 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 1.5 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.
Otago Daily Times
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Otago Daily Times
RNZ blocked from revealing education report
By John Gerritsen of RNZ Attorney-General Judith Collins has been granted an emergency injunction by the High Court to block RNZ from publishing a story it says would damage the government's ability to take part in collective bargaining. The gag order prohibits RNZ from reporting the contents of a confidential education pre-Budget report, which court documents filed by the Attorney-General's office said contained "commercially sensitive information that would prejudice the government's ability to engage effectively in collective bargaining". The court-ordered injunction follows RNZ approaching the office of Education Minister Erica Stanford yesterday afternoon for comment after seeing a document titled "Report: Budget 25 Initiative Themes". The minister's office responded by warning RNZ not to publish any of the details contained in the paper. "I'm putting you on notice that you have sighted improperly released budget sensitive information", a spokesperson for the minister said. "It is not in the public interest to be released. Can you please confirm that information will not be published at this time? Can you please come back to me immediately." Emails contained in court documents show that, minutes later, the minister's office contacted Solicitor-General Una Jagose, KC, who is the chief executive of Crown Law, and legal action commenced to have RNZ restrained from using any information in the document it had seen. At 4pm yesterday, Justice Dale La Hood heard an urgent application from the Attorney-General and granted an interim injunction without notice preventing publication. "The defendants are restrained from publishing or disseminating themselves or by their agents any information contained in the 'Report: Budget 25 Initiative Themes'," he ordered. "For the avoidance of doubt, nothing in these orders restrains in any way any journalist from reporting on the Budget once delivered." The Attorney-General's office had applied for the injunction on the grounds that "the report is confidential and Budget sensitive and contains commercially sensitive information that would prejudice the government's ability to engage effectively in collective bargaining". "The defendants are aware that report was prepared for Budget purposes and are on notice of its confidential nature. It can only have come into the defendants' hands through a breach of confidence by a person(s) unknown to the plaintiff (breach of confidence). "The defendants are aware the information is confidential and that the plaintiff has asserted a right of confidentiality in the information. "Publication or dissemination of the report or information in it will further breach confidence. The dissemination that has already occurred has breached the plaintiff's rights of confidence in respect of the information, and any further publication will involve further such breaches." The Attorney-General also applied for an order that RNZ "return and deliver up the report held by or on behalf of the defendants". The report was the fourth in an unprecedented series of Budget-related education documents seen by RNZ in the past five weeks that have come via three different channels.
