On Tuesday, RNZ reported:
Education Minister Eric Stanford is announcing the government's new Writing Action Plan to supercharge writing achievement and better set Kiwi kids up for success
The announcement comes the same day as a new study shows only a quarter of children at the end of intermediate school were writing and doing maths last year at the level expected by new curriculums introduced this year.
The Curriculum Insights study tested children in Years 3, 6 and 8 last year and results were released on Tuesday.
The study found children were doing about as well as in previous years.
But it found few were performing at the level expected by the incoming maths and English curriculums.
Just 22 percent of Year 3 children, 30 percent of Year 6 children and 23 percent of Year 8s were doing maths at the expected level.
And in writing 41 percent of Year 3s, 33 percent of Year 6 children and 24 percent of Year 8s were at the level expected of their age group.
Until poverty is tackled head-on, our kids will continue to struggle, no matter how many curriculum tweaks or attendance crackdowns we see. Poverty’s impact on learning is undeniable. Hungry children can’t focus; insecure housing breeds stress and illness. Research shows 14% of students skip meals weekly due to financial hardship, leading to score drops of 42–76 points across subjects, equivalent to 2–4 years of lost learning.
In 2024, child poverty metrics worsened: material hardship rose to 13.2% (152,000 children), up from 12.5% in 2022/23, with Māori and Pasifika children hit hardest. National’s austerity measures, slashing minimum wage growth and freezing welfare adjustments, have deepened this crisis.
Real-term cuts to benefits amid rising costs have left many families scrambling, with 20% of households with school-age kids unable to afford healthy food. The government’s policies, significantly skewed toward high earners, and cuts to school lunches, that have largely become inedible, offer no relief to struggling families, ensuring more children are hungry, unable to learn.
🚂 In today’s gift that keeps on giving, otherwise known as the train wreck that is the school lunches programme, Minister in charge David Seymour continues to minimise the ongoing problems, Minister of Education Erica Standford enters the fray demanding answers and instead gets… pic.twitter.com/Yzir0aGXYa
— Kelvin Morgan 🇳🇿 (@kelvin_morganNZ) March 4, 2025
Poor housing is another anchor dragging down children's achievement. Overcrowded, damp homes, common across New Zealand, lead to health issues like respiratory problems, with hospitalisation rates for poor children 2–3 times higher than their peers. These conditions lead to students missing school, disrupt sleep and study, compounding stress and reducing focus. Limited access to resources, like internet or school supplies and uniforms, further isolate low-income students.
The current neoliberal government in New Zealand has also made housing for anyone who rents less secure, scaled back social housing investment and made it harder to attain emergency housing. This retreat from housing support entrenches instability, leaving many thousands of kids in environments hostile to learning.
National’s apparent indifference, prioritising landlord tax breaks over beneficial housing reforms or housing programmes, signals a disregard for the conditions that shape educational success. In particular, the National-led government's archaic policies appear to be largely targeted at Māori children, with a return to the bad old days of banning te reo Māori from school literature, even though it's a proven effective tool for learning.
Yesterday, The Guardian reported:
Why is the New Zealand government cutting Māori words from some school books?
A shake-up of New Zealand’s curriculum has resulted in Māori words being scrapped from a selection of books used to teach five-year-olds and a decision not to reprint a well-loved book for young readers because it contained too many Māori words.
The changes have sparked widespread criticism from academics, teachers and authors, who have called it “an assault” on Māori identity and the latest in the coalition government’s efforts to prioritise English over the Indigenous language – criticisms the education minister has strongly rejected.
...
Why have the changes sparked criticism?
Principles, academics and authors have criticised the decision, saying it undermines the place of the Indigenous language and children’s ability to learn both English and Māori.
“It’s not only harmful from a cultural identity perspective, but it also gives very little faith in our children that they can grasp these very few, simple words,” said Dr Awanui Te Huia, associate professor at Victoria University of Wellington’s Māori studies department, Te Kawa a Māui.
Curriculum reform and attendance policies, while not irrelevant, are secondary to the social conditions required to provide effective learning. The current curriculum’s lack of clarity in subjects like science and outdated literacy approaches do need fixing, and low attendance (only 58% of students attended school more than 90% of the time in 2024) is a concern. But National’s obsession with structured literacy mandates and penalising poor families with truancy fines entirely misses the point.
A child who’s hungry or sick won’t learn, no matter how rigorous the curriculum or how often they’re dragged to class by parents afraid of further financial penalties. These measures distract from the root issue: poverty inhibiting children's potential to learn.
The coalition of chaos’ policies betray a wilful blindness to what matters. Instead of investing in things that work, like school lunch programmes, proven to boost engagement and achievement, they’ve slashed funding for Ka Ora, Ka Ako by $107 million annually, reducing per-student lunch budgets from $6.99–$8.90 to as low as $3, compromising meal quality for over 244,000 students in 2025.
Instead of expanding health services or social housing, they’ve cut social housing investment and restricted access to numerous social services, while funnelling $153 million to charter schools with no proven benefit. This isn’t just neglect; it’s a deliberate choice to let inequality fester while wasting taxpayer money on pet projects already proven to be failures.
Following the appalling results of his school lunch cuts, his ineffective school attendance strategy & his hated Treaty Principles Bill, charter schools are set to be yet another significant failure for David Seymour.
— Nick (@StrayDogNZ) April 26, 2025
To date only 6 schools have expressed interest in converting. pic.twitter.com/fSES3xiHp5
In 2024, Stuff reported:
Charter school agency staff paid average salary of $158,889
The new charter school agency is paying its staff an average salary of $158,889 - much higher than Ministry of Education staff and more than 50% higher than the public service average salary.
The agency has 18 staff members and sits within the Ministry of Education. But it pays more than staff there, where the average salary is $112,300, according to the public service commission. Charter school agency staff are also paid 56% more than the average public service salary, which is $101,700.
In April, Stuff reported:
Charter schools: David Seymour defends $10 million for 215 students
David Seymour is defending the $10 million budget for charter schools when seven have been operating since February this year with only 215 students enrolled in them.
By averaging the cost across the 215 students, it equates to roughly $46,500 per student and is significantly higher than the core funding per student at a state school, which is just above $9000.
The evidence is clear: poverty drives educational decline, and the coalition of chaos' austerity policies are only making the situation worse. If we want kids to thrive, we need a government that ensures they’re fed, housed, and able to be healthy, not one that punishes them for their circumstances. Until then, no amount of classroom tinkering will close the gap.
