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RNZ News
22-05-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
Budget 2025: 'Underperforming' areas cut to pay for 'seismic shift' in education
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. [subhead] 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 [subhead] 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. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
29-04-2025
- General
- RNZ News
School breakfasts: 'A really great way to show our community that we care'
Emaa Shelford, Kiritahi Koroheke and Paul Marchioni are preparing the school lunches for the day. Photo: Ke-Xin Li It's 8:30 in the morning and a crowd of students at Melville Primary School are at the breakfast table in the hall. On this Monday it's scrambled eggs on wholemeal toast, with sausages left over from Friday's lunch. With their best vocabulary, the kids describe to me how their food tastes. "Amazing" and "phenomenal" are the terms they felt appropriate. Principal Bronwyn Haitana said breakfast makes a big difference, especially with attendance. "We used to have a lot of people away on Mondays and now Monday is probably our biggest breakfast club and it's just a really fun and happy place to be in the mornings." For the usual breakfast club, Melville Primary receives milk and Weet-Bix through Kickstart - a program co-funded by the Ministry of Social Development, Fonterra and Sanitarium. Last year MSD chipped in nearly $1.3 million for the scheme. The funding for 2023-24 was $1.266 million. Moko and Azaan say breakfast is a time they can spend with their friends. Photo: Ke-Xin Li Melville Primary also has fruit break - which is provided by Te Whatu Ora's Fruit In Schools programme. Te Whatu Ora spent $9,188,644 excluding GST on the Fruit in Schools programme over the 2023/24 financial year. Charitable organisation KidsCan also supplies cans like baked beans. "We sort of mix up from that Fruit in Schools, Breakfast Club, and Kidscan to make up the breakfast. When we have bread leftover from sandwiches the week before, we use that leftover bread for breakfast. We don't have very much wastage at all because we're always making sure that we have better ways of making that stuff used in other ways." Bronwyn Haitana considers her school lucky to be an internal model provider for the Ka Ora Ka Ako programme, which means her 250 pupils not only enjoy hot lunches cooked fresh at the school, but there's also a hot breakfast available at least once a week. In the kitchen is chef Paul Marchioni and his team. Marchioni learnt his skills by helping on the marae and knows how to make a crowd favorite. Emaa Shelford, Paul Marchioni and Kiritahi Koroheke are responsible for cooking for the 250 kids at Melville Primary School every day. Photo: Ke-Xin Li He spends the school holidays refining recipes. "I like to use our moko (grandchild) and whanau to have a try. It's funny as they're really honest, they'll just say, 'that was yuck'. They can provide some good intelligence. Unfortunately for quite a lot of our children, their parents actually can't afford to spend a lot of money on food. So they're cutting back on things like fresh vegetables. Some of the kids didn't even know what they were actually looking at in the lunch boxes that we provide. We have to hide those things that they're not used to eating. So blending and pureeing vegetables and putting it into the main meal, so they don't know it's there." At midday, the children are having pears for their fruit break. "It gives you more energy and you can be healthy," one student told me, and turned to ask his classmates what the fruit was. Arnia and Teiaea are on fruit duty. Photo: Ke-Xin Li Haitana said they use meals as an opportunity to educate the children about healthy food. "When they first started, they weren't used to eating the sandwiches and they were pulling out all the tomatoes and lettuce, and that was actually quite expensive. So we talked to the kids around seasonal foods and talked to them about why we have lots of tomatoes around this time. Now when we don't have tomatoes, they'll ask if tomatoes are not in season, and I'll say, yeah, it's too expensive at the moment. I think that's been really valuable because, before they sort of saw food as something that they just eat but not actually understand." Melville Primary School principal Bronwyn Haitana is in charge of handing out the lunches. Photo: Ke-Xin Li Some children were eager to share what they know about the meals they are having. "To keep our bodies healthy and to make our brains go 'wow'" and "to have energy to do mahi" are some of the answers. The school lunch break is at 1:20pm. While handing out the lunches, Haitana also checks the lunches that children brought from home and swaps out the unhealthy ones for a school-made lunch. This day, she swapped out one student's jam biscuits for chicken rice. Principal Bronwyn Haitana swaps a box of jam biscuits for chicken rice. Photo: Ke-Xin Li Haitana said while the internal model is a lot of work, she wouldn't give it up for anything. "I think I've also changed my attitude from food being just to feed the kids, more to it actually is a part of our school culture. We're an urban community. We do have a lot of people, who I would call displaced, such as people who not necessarily whakapapa back to the Hamilton area. We have a lot of Kainga Ora homes, which is great because it means they're out of emergency housing, but it just means that there are a lot of people who might not have whanau support around them. It's (food) a really great way to show our community that we care about them and their kids." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
