The Budget boosts spending on curriculum changes and trade training for teens, freezes nearly all tertiary subsidies and fast-tracks a modest boost for early childhood services.
The Budget increased spending on schools and early childhood education by nearly $2 billion over the next four years.
It provided a 2% increase to schools' operations grants and a 1.5% increase to early childhood subsidies, raising the annual spend on each by about $45 million and $42m respectively with the ECE increase applied in July this year.
The single largest area of spending was $334 million over four years to build more classrooms and schools to keep up with population growth.
The government is introducing a new school curriculum and, from 2028-30, a new secondary school qualification.
The largest of those initiatives was a previously announced $131m for reading, writing and maths training, resources and tests.
The Budget allocated a further $61m for resources for secondary schools for the new curriculum, $5.6m for music teaching kits for primary and intermediate schools, and $20m over four years for professional training to prepare the 32,000-strong secondary teaching workforce for the changes - equating to about $625 per teacher.
There was also $15m to pay newly created Industry Skills Boards to develop vocational secondary school subjects and the Qualifications Authority was allocated $8.4m to start work on the new secondary school qualification.
NZQA also received $44.5m over four years to plug a shortfall in funding for running NCEA and Scholarship and $31m for technology upgrades, including work on machine learning for marking.
Trades Academies, which provided tertiary vocational courses for school students, were allocated an extra $69m over four years to double the number of students to 20,000 by 2030. The money came from the axing of the fees free scheme for tertiary students.
The Budget included $212m to continue the free school lunch programme in 2027.
It provided $10m spread over this year and next to help schools cope with an immigration-driven increase in the number of students needing English language support.
There was also $22m over four years to provide teacher aides to enable an additional 100 children with significant health needs to attend school and $12m to help children in care attend and engage in school.
The Budget reprioritised $65m in education spending over four years from programmes including Positive Behaviour for Learning, teacher professional development, the Te Rito IT project, and a fund that helped primary school children at risk of disengaging but had limited evidence of success.
The Education Review Office's received a $3m-a-year boost to set up a "Schools of Concern" programme to focus on schools with the worst results.
Tertiary subsidies freeze
The Tertiary Education Budget showed the government saved $1b over four years by axing the fees free scheme.
It provided $284m, most of it in 2026 and 2027, to cover increased enrolments in tertiary education - addressing under-funding that has seen many institutions carrying unsubsidised students.
However, subsidy rates remained unchanged except for a 2% increase for foundation courses.
Tertiary institutes would be permitted to raise their fees for domestic student by up to 6% next year - the third consecutive 6% rise.
The Budget redirected $22m a year ($87m over four years) from the fees free savings to provide 1000 more places in the Youth Guarantee scheme for students enrolling in foundation courses at tertiary institutes.
It said $37.5m would be cut from the Education Ministry, Tertiary Education Commission, and tertiary education budget.
This story was first published on rnz.co.nz |  |
