The Government will spend $131 million on reading, writing and maths for Years 0-10 as part of the next round of its education reforms, with Minister Erica Stanford touting new data suggesting some early gains.
The $131 million package will help deliver what's been billed as the second phase of the "Teaching the Basics Brilliantly" changes targeting primary and intermediate schools.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon made the pre-Budget announcement today as Stanford released data from a new 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," 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.
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.
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.
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.
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