Young New Zealanders give their thoughts on the Government's Budget 2025 and how it will impact them. Video \ Jason Dorday
Education got a $2.5 billion boost in Budget 2025 with much of the money going to extra learning support for students with alternative or complex needs.
The Government says the new funding will build more bespoke classrooms and pair more specialists like speech language therapists and educational psychologists with students who need it.
Hundreds of millions have been earmarked to reform the Ongoing Resources Scheme (ORS) which helps students with the highest needs participate in the classroom.
This will be bankrolled in part by the end of Kāhui Ako, a major education programme where schools collaborate and help each other to address student needs.
The death of the scheme from January next year leaves around $375m for the school learning reform.
Education Minister Erica Stanford called it the biggest boost in a generation for learning support after years of “pittance”.
Education Minister Erica Stanford. Photo / Mark Mitchell
“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 potentially “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.
Chris Abercrombie, president of the Post Primary Teachers' Association. Photo / Supplied
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.”
Do you have questions about the Budget? Ask our experts - business editor at large Liam Dann, senior political correspondent Audrey Young and Wellington business editor Jenee Tibshraeny - in a Herald Premium online Q&A here at nzherald.co.nz at 9.30am, Friday, May 23.
