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\nPhoto: RNZ\/Liam K. Swiggs\n<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The Budget increased spending on schools and early childhood education by nearly $2 billion over the next four years.<\/p>\n
It provided a 2 percent increase to schools’ operations grants and a 1.5 percent 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.<\/p>\n
The single largest area of spending was $334 million over four years to build more classrooms and schools to keep up with population growth.<\/p>\n
The government is introducing a new school curriculum and, from 2028-30, a new secondary school qualification.<\/p>\n
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Photo: RNZ \/ Samuel Rillstone\n<\/p>\n
That work attracted about $240m in new spending.<\/p>\n
The largest of those initiatives was a previously announced $131m for reading, writing and maths training, resources and tests.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\nPrime Minister Christopher Luxon visits an Auckland school recently.
\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Marika Khabazi\n<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The Budget included $212m to continue the free school lunch programme in 2027.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Tertiary subsidies freeze<\/p>\n