Scots College headmaster Graeme Yule says private schools pay large amounts of tax to the Government on their fees.
Private schools got a boost of $4.6 million, upping their annual Government funding to $46.2m, announced in Budget 2025. Associate Education Minister David Seymour says he is open to that amount increasing, but what exactly is the money going towards?
At St Cuthbert’s College, a morning stroll across the school grounds brings into view the well-groomed lawns, manicured trees and pale cream buildings.
It’s a short walk past the colonnaded main building to the principal’s office and this passing view of the campus exudes affluence.
The Auckland institution is just one of many private schools across the country getting a boost in funding from the Government.
There are 83 private schools in New Zealand, with a high concentration of them in Auckland, compared to 2450 state schools.
The multi-million dollar funding boost, announced in Budget 2025, is being driven by Associate Minister of Education David Seymour. He says the amount of money private schools receive has been shrinking, with the last increase to the subsidy coming in 2010.
The list of schools receiving the increased subsidy for 2026 will be made available next month by the Ministry of Education.
Seymour also says he’s “open” to the idea of the pot growing even more and explains that children at private schools receive around one-tenth of the funding of public-school students.
“Is that fair? Their parents are taxpayers, they’re New Zealand citizens, they’re entitled to an education. I think in a fair world, that would be higher,” Seymour told the Weekend Herald.
With a roll of 1650 students, St Cuthbert’s College is set to receive an estimated $1.6 million subsidy from the Government. The amount has increased by $160,000 on the previous per-student rate.
Principal Charlotte Avery, who took on the leader’s role at St Cuthbert’s last year after shifting from a prestigious private girls’ school in Cambridge, England, says in real terms the subsidy isn’t a large payment at a $100 increase per student.
“We are grateful of course for that recognition, but in the end it’s a very small part of supplementing our fee income,” Avery says.
“We recognise that we are a school of privilege – privilege is not a dirty word but it is important in terms of recognising responsibility.”
At co-educational private school Scots College in Wellington, headmaster Graeme Yule says the funding increase is “well overdue”. He also argues it shouldn’t become an ideological debate.
“It’s much, much easier to cry elitism and to cry inequality but the facts don’t match that, the finances are different,” Yule says.
“There will always be a perception in this that the Government’s robbing the poor state schools and giving the money to the rich independent schools ... but we receive around $40 million in government subsidy and we pay GST on fees to the Government of around $150 million.”
That tax on fees, Yule says, can be invested back into the state sector to support public school students.
Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) president Chris Abercrombie, however, sees another reason for the Government making this decision.
“Well, David Seymour’s [Epsom] electorate has a lot of private schools in it,” Abercrombie says.
In Abercrombie’s view, the Government’s focus should be firmly on supporting the public education system, and if parents choose to send their child to a private school then the state shouldn’t subsidise that decision.
“We don’t support private schools getting any subsidy at all, let alone an increased subsidy,” he says.
Figures provided by the Ministry of Education reveal the subsidy for Years 1-6 at private schools will be rising to $1016 per student – a 20% increase. That amount has increased by $167 per student. Older students from Years 11-13 will receive $1918 per student - an increase of just 6%.
Subsidy rates will not be recalculated each year but will be treated like other state school resourcing, with adjustments made for the number of students on private school rolls.
But Seymour says his decision hasn’t been influenced by private schools in his electorate, one of the country’s wealthiest, and the PPTA is “just flinging mud”.
In comparison, figures given to the Herald by Seymour’s office reveal the amount for Years 1-6 at state schools is $7648 per student annually, while the funding for secondary schools in the state system is $9853 per student.
At a small Porirua school nestled in native bush on the edge of Cannons Creek, principal Lynda Knight says she has been facing a list of government funding reductions during the last six months.
The school’s funding has been cut for its Reading Recovery programme, Pasifika Early Literacy Project and the Pacific Education Innovation Fund.
Funding has also been cut to Regionally Allocated Professional Learning and Development and te reo Māori training for teachers, so the school can no longer acquire these supports. And there is no longer access to Resource Teachers of Literacy and Māori.
They have also lost a whānau liaison support worker role that was funded by Oranga Tamariki.
Knight says the school, with just 110 primary-age students, can’t hold big parent and community fundraisers as some affluent areas can, and any fundraising initiatives only bring in small amounts of money.
“I think we’re increasing that disparity if we’re increasing the funding [for private schools]; we must be decreasing the amount of money for public schools like mine,” she says.
Abercrombie says disparities between public and private schools are creating a growing divide between the “haves and have-nots”.
Differences in the resources available to schools are exacerbating inequity across the education system, he says.
“State schools are facing that same cost pressure, their power’s gone up and the price of toilet paper – they’re hurting as well. But they don’t have the ability to just increase their fees and tap into other sources of income that private schools do.”
In Wellington, Yule says the private school subsidy is going to be used to keep fees as low as possible at Scots College and increase accessibility for the school. It will also go towards running costs.
Dilworth School in central Auckland is receiving the subsidy but because of its unique position with every student funded fully through a scholarship, the funds will be used elsewhere.
The money at the boys’ boarding school, headmaster Dan Reddiex says, will instead go towards offsetting the cost of food for students, investing in teachers, driving academic results and funding extracurricular activities such as sending their premier choir Fortissimo to the Big Sing Finale in Dunedin.
The school’s whānau community is not typically in a position to fully fund school trips, he says.
“We provide seven meals a day for our students and inflation has hit hard in this area.”
Meanwhile, Avery says the subsidy will support a range of ongoing projects at St Cuthbert’s College. These include enhancing its suite of facilities, improving flood resistance in the school’s buildings and paying teachers and staff members’ salaries.
It will also contribute to improving its outdoor campus – Kahunui – in the Bay of Plenty, a place where Year 10 students travel to attend a month-long school camp that embraces off-the-grid learning.
At Knight’s school in Porirua, Year 6 students used to travel to El Rancho in Waikanae – 45 minutes up the road – for a two-night camp. However, now that community funding is unavailable, the future of camps for their senior students is uncertain.
In a community where family holidays are a rarity, Knight says pupils leaving often comment that school camp is their favourite memory from school.
As Auckland grows, St Cuthbert’s College has been experiencing higher demand for places on its school roll and has waiting lists for prospective students.
Scots College has also been facing similar pressure, with headmaster Yule noticing parents are being propelled to private schools by their feeling of unease in the current state system.
“The issues with literacy and numeracy, open-plan classes and the dissatisfaction with NCEA and so forth, I think, have driven a number of people towards considering independent schooling.”
At Dilworth, Reddiex says demand for places has also increased significantly within the past two years, with scholarship places being highly competitive.
Avery says the subsidy is a recognition of the role independent schools play in educating a percentage of the Kiwi population, which takes the financial pressure off the rest of the education system.
Similarly, Seymour says private school students suddenly flooding into the state sector would create an enormous cost for the Government.
“This whole debate to me says something about where we are and where we could be as a country. What you’ve got is a small group – about 4% of children and their parents and grandparents – often making big sacrifices to pay independent school fees because in their view, that’s a better future for them,” he says.
“Rather than...this kind of sneering, resentful tone, we should say, ‘okay, that’s a choice people make’, I may or may not make it for myself, but we should be happy for other people.
“Those people are actually saving the taxpayer a lot of money.”
In Porirua, Knight believes the $160,000 increase St Cuthbert’s College is receiving could make “a world of difference” at her small school. She says the money would go towards funding two more teachers or more teacher aide support.
Eva de Jong is a New Zealand Herald reporter covering general news for the daily newspaper, Weekend Herald and Herald on Sunday. She was previously a multimedia journalist for the Whanganui Chronicle, covering health stories and general news.
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