Budget 2020

The first stage of Budget 2020 announced on 14 May allocates significant investment in education.

Education Budget 2020 highlights

Vote Education

New operating funding includes:

  • Funding to meet cost and demand pressures across the early learning and schooling – enabling current delivery standards to be maintained as volumes increase. This includes:
    • $100.4 million to meet increased demand in early learning and increasing school rolls 
    • $122.7 million for a general 1.6% increase in early learning subsidy rates 
    • $105.2 million for a general 1.6% increase in schools’ operations grants
    • $6.3 million for an increase of 1.6% in funding for secondary-tertiary programmes (Trades Academies)
    • $79.7 million to meet cost and demand pressures in learning support
  • $200 million to support Māori learners and whānau to reconnect and succeed in education post COVID-19 and strengthen the integration of te Reo Māori into all students’ learning
  • $100.0 million to support Kōhanga Reo and revitalise Te Reo Māori
  • $151.1 million to improve pay for qualified teachers in education and care services
  • $216.7 million to expand the free and healthy school lunches programme to around 200,000 students as part of the COVID-19 Response and Recovery fund
  • $36.2 million to support home-based early childhood educators to become qualified
  • $3.1 million over five years to increase funding rates for playcentres
  • $25.8 million to help advance the Christchurch Schools Rebuild Programme
  • $31.5 million to expand four Public Private Partnership Schools due to growing rolls, as forecast in the National Education Growth Plan
  • $16.5 million to support the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand and reduce the impact on teachers as they move to an annual practicing certificate fee.

New capital funding includes:

  • $91.4 million to help advance the Christchurch Schools Rebuild Programme
  • $23.8 million to expand four Public Private Partnership Schools due to growing rolls, as forecast in the National Education Growth Plan.

Vote Tertiary Education

New operating funding includes:

  • $334.1 million funding for additional tertiary education enrolments
  • $320.0 million targeted training and apprenticeship fund
  • $141.0 million for a general 1.6% increase to tertiary education tuition and training subsidies to meet cost pressures
  • Up to $412.0 million support for employers to retain and keep training their apprentices 
  • $20.0 million for a student hardship fund for 2020
  • $16.0 million boost to Adult and Community Education to help providers to meet the increased needs for training and upskilling in the wake of COVID-19
  • $6.1 million to administer a code of pastoral care for domestic tertiary students.

Budget 2020 and the response to the COVID-19 pandemic

Budget 2020 has been extensively impacted by the global pandemic and the public health and economic measures taken by the New Zealand Government in response to the COVID-19 crisis.

As a result, Budget 2020 is a Recovery Budget and has been reframed to largely focus on cost pressures and responding to COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant challenges to how we deliver education for children and young people. It has highlighted the need for a core service that is built on strong foundations, resilient to disruption, and able to adapt and respond to changing circumstances.

The Government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has three distinct elements:

  • Immediate: fighting the virus and cushioning the blow
  • Recovery: positioning for recovery from the impact of COVID-19, and
  • Resilience: significant long-term change to reset and revitalise government and the economy for the future.

The Government’s Budget 2020 focuses on the first two elements of this strategy, with an emphasis on maintaining core services and delivery, and the first phase of recovery.

Budget 2020 includes funding for some of the immediate measures taken by the Government to respond to the impact of COVID 19. This includes:

  • $20.2 million in the current financial year to help fund the childcare for essential workers
  • $36.4 million in the next two years to enable students’ access to online teaching and learning.

More details of initiatives responding to COVID-19 will be added in due course.

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