The government's $747 million boost for learning support is getting the thumbs up from schools, despite the cuts it caused in other areas of education spending.
The Principals' Federation described the increase as a "breakthrough", teacher union the Educational Institute Te Riu Roa said it was welcome but "a drop in the ocean", while the Post Primary Teachers' Association said increases to the funding pool for children with the most serious needs would make "a significant difference" for those students.
Principals at a post-Budget briefing on Thursday afternoon told RNZ they agreed with Education Minister Erica Stanford's description of the increase as seismic, saying it would make a big difference for children with learning and behavioural needs.
The money would provide more specialist staff, more teacher aide hours and included $100 million to build more classrooms for specialist schools serving children with disabilities.
After the briefing, education consultant Margi Leech thanked Stanford for the increase in learning support funding.
She later told RNZ the issue was very personal.
"I have a daughter with Down syndrome and have had to fight to get support for her. It's as if the attitude in the past has been 'she's got Down syndrome she doesn't matter, she's never going to get a job'. But she's now 26, living in her own home, participating and contributing in the community... and I see that this Budget is recognising the potential for our very special children," she said.
The initiative will ensure all primary and intermediate schools have access to a learning support coordinator, and boosts the service for pre-schoolers while also extending it into the first year of primary school.
Oropi School principal Andrew King said the announcement would make a difference for the pupils at his school who had learning needs.
"We've got about 30 or 40 children on our register... we have ORS children and high health needs children and children with lower needs," he said.
"It's going to give the time needed to access the services that these kids need which we've just not had."
Much of the funding was aimed at primary schools but Avonside Girls' High School principal Catherine Law said secondary schools would benefit from that.
"When students come to us in Year 9 and 10, if they haven't had that kind of intervention and support in 0 to 8, then obviously we are having to pick up a lot more of the resourcing and working with those students and wrap around," she said.
"So for us it actually is really, really great to hear that there'll be a lot of investment into that learning support coordinator role, into more teacher aide hours, and into those specialist roles in the primary sector and intermediate sector."
Law said Avonside was part of a strong Kāhui Ako - the scheme that clustered schools to work together - but she accepted it would be cut to contribute $375 million to the learning support increase.
Burnside High School principal Scott Haines said in 16 years as a principal he had never seen a Budget that would have so much impact on learning support.
He said he was especially happy with a $122 million boost to the Ongoing Resource Scheme for students with the highest needs.
"One of the big ticket items for me I think was every student who who gains ORS verification will get the funding. I think that's been a a source of great frustration for many years that we would get students denied for ORS funding based on the the lack of places rather than the lack of need," he said.
However, Haines said he was disappointed the roll out of more learning support coordinators was focused on primary and intermediate schools, not secondary schools.
He was also worried about funding for school property, despite a big boost in last year's Budget and $672m over four years in this year's Budget.
"Capital investment in school property just remains at critical levels. Every school has a horror story around school property and it's the persistent issue across the country that will plague us in years to come," he said.
Education Minister Erica Stanford had been promising a learning support Budget this year.
She told RNZ she knew it would make a big difference.
"This was huge to me personally and as you could see from some of the emotion in the audience, this is going to be huge for parents with children who need additional help at school - learners who have the most high and complex needs, right down to those children who just need a bit of extra help and literacy and numeracy. This is going to be game changing for those students," she said.
Stanford said a significant portion of the new funding was focused on the youngest children.
"We know the earlier we intervene in a child's life, the better chance of success they have, and so making sure we're getting ed-psychs, speech, language therapists, early intervention, teachers who deal with families and children and teachers involved as early as we possibly can means those children enter school and have the best chance to be able to learn to read and write, do mathematics and and have the chance of success," she said.
Stanford said she was confident teachers and principals would accept the cuts made to other areas of the school budget in order to pay for the learning support increase.
She said past education ministers and the Education Ministry itself had not ensured that spending was getting results.
"We are going through every single line of spend, working out if it is getting the outcomes we need and if it's not we're going to stop it and reprioritise it elsewhere. And that's what you've seen this year. There is a significant reprioritisation directly into the frontline into our kids to change lives and away from things that weren't working. And frankly, that's what we should be doing from now on," she said.
