No funding for new plan to overhaul learning support system

As published in newsroom

Education Minister Erica Stanford has quietly launched a new programme to overhaul learning support, but there is no funding for that work in her $2.9 billion education budget.

“How can teachers teach when they have to evacuate the classroom on a daily basis because one student is trashing it?”

After more than 30 years in the classroom, Penny Sinclair left the profession last year. She was burnt out and tired of the job coming ahead of her family.

Now, she’s an ORS outreach teacher – someone who works with high-needs students.

Like other educators drowning in an unmanageable sea of high and complex needs, Sinclair was surprised to see no new money for learning support in this year’s Budget.

“[There is] nothing in the Budget for special needs students or their support workers,” she told Newsroom.

“High needs have escalated since Covid with children presenting at school with social and emotional issues; non-talkers, sound sensitive, no social skills, in nappies … All of which need to be addressed before learning can occur,” Sinclair said.

“All those millions of tax dollars being put into structured literacy when these kids can’t even self regulate for more than a few minutes.”

Applications for ORS funding had increased, but teachers and schools talked about how hard it was to get money or support, with only the “worst of the worst” getting help.

Meanwhile, teaching and support staff were being assaulted “on a daily basis”, she said.

Despite anecdotal evidence and recent reports, including one from ERO in March, painting a picture of increasingly challenging behaviour and complex needs, the sector feels like it’s been left out in the cold.

Newsroom understands union representatives and teachers made this clear to Stanford during a post-Budget meeting last week.

They said they saw the lack of funding for learning support as a broken promise.

The sector – particularly NZEI Te Riu Roa union and the Aotearoa Educators’ Collective – had been scathing of the decision to spend $153 million re-introducing Act’s charter schools, rather than use the money for teacher aide funding.

Following the pre-Budget announcement of David Seymour’s charter schools, union president Mark Potter said that money could fully fund 700 full-time teacher aides at step 4. 

“A teacher aide for every child that needs one would begin to seriously address the increasing learning needs of our tamariki that are not currently being addressed.”

Following the release of the Budget proper, the collective said the decision to fund charter schools over learning support and leadership support for principals was “tragic”.

Money should have gone towards “comprehensive support for our most at-risk students”, spokesperson Sarah Aiono said.

“By failing to address the needs of these vulnerable groups, the Government demonstrates a significant disconnect from the daily realities faced by New Zealand teachers. Support needs to go well beyond the current approach of PLD [professional learning and development] on literacy and numeracy.”

The collective estimated $153m could instead fund 3974 learning assistants working 30 hours a week, or support for 12,812 high-needs ORS children, or 1530 learning support coordinators to deal with the inequity of access that currently existed.

While in opposition, Stanford said she was sick of watching taxpayer dollars going into the back office at the Ministry of Education. Last May, Stanford told Newshub Nation teacher aide budgets and ORS funding were being cut in real terms under the Labour government.

“If I was education minister, that’s where all of my support would be going,” she said.

In April, Stanford laid out her six priorities for education, which included the curriculum, more consistent data gathering and assessment, teacher training and workforce development, and learning support.

She promised to target effective learning support interventions for students with additional needs.

But Stanford’s first education budget – which includes a whopping $2.9 billion in new money – doesn’t have anything for learning support.

However, on Budget Day itself the Ministry of Education’s website was updated to include a new page, laying out the Government’s new learning support work programme.

The ministry’s general manager of learner success and Tiriti policy Sela Finau confirmed to Newsroom that while the work programme had been launched in April – alongside Stanford announcing her six priority areas – the page on the website went live on Thursday.

The work programme appeared to be a continuation of the work started (but not yet funded) by the previous government, following former education minister Jan Tinetti’s Highest Needs Review.

The page set out five areas that needed attention:

Operational changes to make the learning support system easier to navigate

Improvements in data collection that would enable the creation of a data-driven funding model focussed on delivering high-quality interventions, programmes and supports

Workforce optimisation

Building teacher capability to meet diverse learning needs

Developing a network plan for specialist alternative provision.

“The work programme to support the 5 priorities for strengthening learning support is still being developed. More information will be provided in the coming months,” Finau said.

The ministry page said a new webpage would be created with further information once it was available.

Labour Party education spokeswoman Jan Tinetti said she was “absolutely gutted” to see the lack of funding for learning support and high-needs students.

Tinetti said she wanted to be supportive of the Government’s education initiatives where she could, but was “really, really disappointed” by this Budget.

“I’m trying to get to a position where we’re not politically footballing education all the time. Today, I just can’t do that,” she said.

Tinetti said fundamental changes needed to be made, but that needed to be backed up by significant funding.

Stanford’s office has been approached for comment.

There are about 27,000 teacher aides working one-on-one with students to aid their learning and development. At the end of March, there were 591.2 full-time learning support coordinators, across 1052 kura/schools in 124 clusters to support disabled and neuro-diverse learners.   

According to Budget documents an estimated 40,000 students would receive learning support in the coming financial year. The Government had budgeted for between 34,225 and 45,720 students to receive support.

Meanwhile, the estimates and supplementary estimates for the amount the government expected to spend on alternative education and learning support services was $740.1m. No new funding or initiatives had been noted.

On the face of it, the Government did what it promised: find efficiencies in the back office, to redirect towards the frontline.

But a mix of tough economic times and needs for funding in areas like IT upgrades and cybersecurity, school property maintenance, rebuilds and expansions, and a modest increases to operational grants meant there was not enough left to fund everything.

The Ministry of Education was one of the public sector’s biggest cutters, finding savings of 40 percent in its eligible baseline.

In Education, $73.6m in savings were expected each year; however, the ministry found $114m as well as an extra $275m each year outside of the baseline. This was mostly achieved through a reduction in staff ($148m saved) “back-office efficiencies” ($92m) and $61.5m saved through a reduction in spend on contractors and consultants.

That helped Stanford fund her $2.9b budget package, which included:

$1.5b for education property

$478m for free school lunches

$199m for a 2.5 percent increase in operational grants and 3 percent increase for equity-based funding

$191m for a 2 percent adjustment in ECE subsidies

$163m for digital services

$153m for charter schools

$67m for structured literacy

$53m to boost teacher supply

$45m for the increase of non-native English speakers

$15m to support high health needs (like diabetes, incontinence and seizure-based conditions)

$13m for Playcentre

$14m for period products in schools 

$32m for Holidays Act Remediation