Budget 2025 is investing $152.8 million in teachers, principals, and education professionals, through leadership development pathways, teacher supply initiatives and funded registration and certification, to build the education workforce of the future.

Growing and promoting the education workforce#

Developing the workforce of the future, including leadership development pathways is one of the 6 education priorities for the education system. The priorities contribute to reaching the Government’s achievement and attendance targets. The evidence tells us that the quality of teaching and leadership has the biggest in-school effect on raising student achievement.

Supply#

Attracting the best teachers and education professionals.

Develop#

Opportunities to grow and embed best practise through professional development.

Aspire#

Training teachers to become leaders of the future.

Lead#

Support principals can rely on when they need it through the expanded Leaders Advisory Service.

Budget 2025 builds on last year’s investment in workforce and focuses on:

• training more teachers with 530 additional places in the School Onsite Training Programme over 4 years and cost adjustments for 1,331 places committed through Budget 2024
• additional professional learning and development opportunities for teachers and teacher aides focused on increasing the confidence and capability to support the diverse needs of all learners
• attracting and growing the supply of teachers and learning support specialists, both domestic and overseas to support our workforce
• developing and strengthening the leadership pipeline of aspiring and current principals
• additional leadership advisors to provide 1-on-1 support to principals when they need it.

To help reduce financial barriers for teachers, Budget 2025 will cover the costs of domestic teacher fees and levies for around 115,000 school and early childhood teachers over the next 3 years. This means that every domestic teacher renewing their certificate in the next 3 years will benefit from this.

Budget 2025 is also providing funding for the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) to maintain pay rates for the Specialist Workforce employed by NZQA to administer NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship assessment.

Teacher fees and levies – Teaching Council funding#

• $53.3m operating funding.

This funding covers the costs of teachers’ Teaching Council fees and levies for three years. This covers full time and part time domestic teachers in schooling and early learning, providing financial relief to approximately 115,000 teachers over the period. This initiative will compliment other workforce supply initiatives and help encourage more people to pursue a career in teaching and retain existing teachers.

Teacher supply – attraction and growth#

• $33.4m operating funding
• $0.03m capital funding.

The funding grows and maintains the pipeline of teachers. The funding provides places for an additional 530 teachers to train in an onsite teacher training model, and it provides cost adjustments for the 1,331 places that were funded in Budget 2024.

Budget 2025 builds on last year’s investment and will result in 1,860 new teachers by 2028. This initiative also funds marketing campaigns to attract New Zealanders to work as teachers and learning support specialists, and to attract overseas teachers and learning support specialists to work in New Zealand.

Aspiring principal programme and expanding the leadership advisory service#

• $30.2m operating funding
• $0.3m capital funding.

This initiative invests in the future of school leadership, providing support to develop and strengthen the leadership pipeline of aspiring and existing principals. This will help ensure that schools and kura are well-led and principals have a responsive service they can rely on for support and advice. This funding provides:

• up to 200 aspiring principals each year to undertake an Aspiring Principals Programme
• double the capacity of the Leadership Advisory Service to support principals when they need it.

New Zealand Qualifications Authority specialist workforce – wages and human resource costs#

• $28.0m operating funding.

This funding maintains pay rates for the approximately 10,000 contracted Specialist Workforce employed by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) to administer NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship.

The funding also supports a small team of recruiters and ongoing management and administration of the human capital system, which is necessary to recruit, onboard and pay the specialist workforce.

Professional learning and development for literacy, maths and assessment#

• $4.9m operating funding.

This funding provides professional learning and development (PLD) in literacy and te reo matatini, maths and pāngarau, and assessment and aromatawai for teachers working across Years 0 to 10.

This will support 450 to 500 extra teachers across English, Māori medium and kura kaupapa Māori settings to be able to engage in literacy, maths or assessment PLD per year. These improvements to teaching practices are expected to benefit approximately 11,000 students each year.

Teacher aide professional learning and development#

• $3.0m operating funding.

This initiative will specifically provide professional learning and development (PLD) funding for teacher aides to access learning on creating strategies to support the behaviours of learners in a classroom displaying characteristics of unmet need.

This will allow for more responsiveness and improved impacts for learners with learning support needs stemming from unmet need. Unmet needs refer to the essential physical, emotional, or social requirements that are not adequately fulfilled for an individual, often leading to frustration and challenging behaviours.