The Government will spend $131 million on reading, writing and maths support for Years 0-10 as part of the next round of its education reforms — with minister Erica Stanford touting "early results" suggesting success.
The $131 million package will deliver what's been billed as the second phase of the "Teaching the Basics Brilliantly" programme targeting primary and intermediate schools.
Among the initiatives are maths kits for every Year 0-8 classroom, free digital writing tools for more than 200,000 students, new curriculum-aligned workbooks, and an extra 36 maths intervention teachers across the country.
Three new pilot "maths hubs" will also be established, designed to give teachers an opportunity to observe best practice and improve how they teach mathematics.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon made the pre-Budget announcement today as Stanford promoted data from a new monitoring study — which she suggested highlighted early signs of progress from the Government's first phase of changes.
"After the introduction of such a significant reform, with less than a year of implementation, today's results surpassed expectations," she said.
"These, I emphasise, are very early signs only. There is still a huge amount of work ahead of us, and no one is claiming mission accomplished just yet, in less than a year of reform.
"Real success will mean that we are seeing small improvements over many years, with more children at curriculum and less needing additional support."
Data from the Curriculum Insights and Progress Study, sampled in late 2025, showed a statistically significant improvement for Year 6 students in both writing and maths.
However, the same data showed no improvement in reading at any year level.
There were 12 initiatives in the Budget education package announced today.
"Our focus is ensuring that young people are set up for success at high school and well prepared to achieve secondary school qualifications," Stanford said.
The largest share of the funding, $43.5 million, will go toward professional learning and development for teachers and school leaders, including training in "high impact explicit teaching practices" and how to use student achievement data.
Writing support received $38.7 million to fund new curriculum-aligned workbooks for Year 4 and 5s and free digital writing tools for more than 200,000 Year 6-8 students.
Stanford said the digital tool replaced a resource many schools had previously been purchasing themselves. "We will be providing it free of charge to all schools," she said.
The minister said the writing workbooks for Year 4 and 5 students were deliberately pen and paper-based. "We didn't have a digital tool for Year 4 and 5 — we want them to be using a pen and paper, so there's books instead," she said.
Maths support would receive $29.7 million for a range of new initiatives.
A further $19.4 million was allocated to structured literacy, including decodable books for older readers, a new Year 2 Literacy Check and an accelerated literacy programme.
Budget 2026 also funds a new reading action plan called Read to Succeed, joining the existing Make it Count maths plan and a writing action plan.
Both new money and reprioritised spending in package
Stanford said the $131m package was funded through "a mixture" of new money and reprioritised spending, but she would not confirm the breakdown ahead of Budget Day.
"You'll need to wait for the Budget, but there is significant new money in the Budget as well as reprioritisations as you've seen from me every single year," she said.
"Every single Budget I have always made sure I've got stuff out of the back-end that's not working, I've stopped it, and I've put it into the hands of children in the classroom."
Education Minister Erica Stanford says the new grades-based system will take time to turn achievement around. (Source: 1News)
But the opposition and some educators have questioned where the money is coming from. Labour education spokesperson Ginny Andersen said parents had a right to know.
Berhampore School principal and former president of the primary teachers' union NZEI Mark Potter, said it was too early to say whether the funding would make a difference.
"What we need to know is how much of it is new investment, how much of it is reprioritised from other areas we needed, and how much of it is going to land that will actually make a difference for us," he said.
New maths hubs to be piloted, kits for classrooms
Maths support in the Budget package included three new "Maths Hubs" as centres of excellence, hands-on maths equipment for every Year 0-8 classroom, a new times table and division check at Year 5, and 36 additional intervention teachers.
Stanford described the Year 5 times tables and division check as a "really light touch, low stakes check" to ensure students were developing fact fluency and accuracy."
Hands-on maths kits would be given to "all Years 0 to 8 classrooms nationwide" to ensure every learner has access to high-quality maths and pāngarau learning experiences.
This would benefit more than 500,000 students in around 17,000 classrooms, according to the Government, with the initiative costing $6.2 million.
Stanford appeared after announcing the Government's replacement for NCEA. (Source: Q and A)
Costing $6.6 million, three new Maths Hubs would be trialled as "centres of excellence to ensure high-quality delivery of mathematics for Years 0 to 10.
"One of the best things for building confidence and capability as a teacher is to spend time with experienced colleagues looking at best practice, undertaking observation, and discussing resourcing and planning, and these hubs will create that opportunity for the sector to now own these reforms themselves," Stanford said today.
The number of full-time maths intervention teachers would be increased from 143 to 179, a change that would cost $14.6 million.
Within existing funding, the Education Ministry would also be extending the maths acceleration programme to include tutoring for high school Year 9-10 students who are more than a year behind curriculum expectations.
Luxon queried on Q+A interviews, immigration
The Prime Minister also answered other questions put to him in the media stand-up following the education announcement with Stanford. He spoke alongside senior minister Chris Bishop, who was there in his capacity as an electorate MP.
Asked why he hadn't done any interviews with TVNZ's Q+A programme recently, Luxon said: "It's just a decision from my media team.
"But I'm here with you today, so I think that's pretty good."
When asked a follow-up about his availability, given that both Cabinet ministers standing behind him, Stanford and Bishop, had recently appeared on the programme, Luxon said: "I'm sure I will in due course".
It has been seventeen months since the Prime Minister last sat down with the show. (Source: Q and A)
He also added to his comments following a major speech last week, where he drew the battle lines on immigration for the National Party.
In that pre-Budget speech as party leader, Luxon said "failed immigration policies in Europe and North America have ... stoked a politics of division" and told the business community he would choose "social stability" over their bottom lines "every single time".
Asked today whether the Government had a target or cap for immigration, Luxon said it did not, but said the existing system was "very strongly anchored in our economic strategy and also our infrastructure".
He again pointed to what he suggested had been failed policy settings overseas.
"Think about 13 to 14 million illegals in the US, possibly up to a million in the UK, including up to 115 illegals arriving by small boats each and every day. Think about what's happening with Germany — a million asylum seekers in a single year," he said.
"Those are problems that we don't have in New Zealand."
Luxon added: "Just go look at Canada, which actually got very disconnected from its economic strategy and its infrastructure capacity, and you've seen Canada now really tighten up its immigration settings and wind them back big time."
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