Recent news that inflation has spiked to over four percent highlights the financial pain that schools and kura across the country are suffering, said Chris Abercrombie, president of PPTA Te Wehengarua, the union for secondary school teachers and principals.
The union said that it wants all political parties to commit to revise upwards schools’ funding adjustment for 2027, which was originally set in the May Budget.
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“We have already called out the current Government’s 2 percent adjustment as shockingly inadequate given Treasury’s inflation forecast of 3.2 percent for the year.
“It’s now clear that inflation will exceed that forecast – the Government must not just sit on its hands while students’ education suffers.”
“There needs to be an urgent recalculation of the school ‘operational grant’ to fully meet a revised inflation forecast for the 2026 calendar year.”
“And if the Government won’t deliver that, we call on all parties to go into the November election committing to this as an urgent post-election action and a first step to combat the ‘cost of learning’ crisis we are facing.”
Even before the 2027 adjustment was announced, PPTA Te Wehengarua had released analysis that showed that successive governments had let school funding fall nearly 12 percent below inflation.
The analysis highlighted how far this funding gap stretches. It gives, as an example, a middle-sized secondary school with a roll of about 800 students.
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The PPTA said this school would have received an operational grant of around $1.8 million in 2021.
By 2026, the school’s operational grant would have increased by about $220K. However, based on the current inflation rate, the costs of those goods and services would have increased by about $450K – nearly twice as much. So, it said, this school would be worse off by about $230K.
“For the sake of our young people, the next Parliament has to make up that gap, but an urgent revision to the 2027 rate to take account of this latest inflation spike is a crucial first step.”
