Why Budget 2025 is anything but a vision

It’s often said that a nation’s budget reflects its values. If that’s true, then Budget 2025 tells us undeniably that children, especially our youngest tamariki, are not a priority.

At a time when Aotearoa is grappling with deepening inequality, declining educational outcomes and widespread disillusionment across the education sector, Budget 2025 offers little more than a Band-Aid on a broken sector. It favours short-term, downstream interventions over the kind of structural, upstream investment that could actually make a generational difference.

Let’s begin with what this Budget so glaringly ignores: Early Childhood Education (ECE). This is the very foundation of our education system where dispositions toward learning are formed, where play becomes a pedagogical tool, and where equity should begin.

The evidence is overwhelming: investment in the early years yields the highest returns educationally, socially and economically. Yet Budget 2025 continues the pattern of chronic underinvestment in ECE. There is no meaningful increase in per-child funding. There is no guarantee of pay parity for ECE kaiako. There is no strategy to support community-led, kaupapa Māori or Pacific-led services. Just silence.

Meanwhile, ECE centres are closing. Teachers are leaving the sector. Services are being forced to make impossible choices between quality and survival. The funding simply hasn’t kept up with inflation, let alone with the true cost of delivering a quality education.

“The evidence is overwhelming: investment in the early years yields the highest returns educationally, socially and economically. Yet Budget 2025 continues the pattern of chronic underinvestment in ECE.”

Making matters worse is the Government’s rollback of pay equity provisions. This is not just a technical adjustment to legislation; it is a deliberate dismantling of progress. Predominantly female, undervalued sectors like ECE are once again being told to wait. But they’ve already waited decades.

The budget boasts investment in learning support. On paper, that might sound like progress. But when you break it down, the picture becomes less convincing, especially when targeted interventions like Maori, Pacific, and literacy supports are being cut in the process.

Extend early intervention services – good, but long overdue.
Expand Learning Support Coordinators – useful, but already stretched too thin.
Ongoing Resourcing Scheme (ORS) funding for students with the highest needs – but demand continues to outpace supply.

And the flagship announcement? An addition to teacher aide hours by 2028. Spread across thousands of schools and centres, this amounts to crumbs, just over 7 hours per education setting per week.

The numbers may sound impressive in press releases, but they don’t go far enough to shift the system. They do not address the foundational under-resourcing that leaves kaiako overwhelmed and learners under supported. Nor do they offer the joined-up, cross-sector coordination needed to genuinely embed inclusive education, in fact the budget undoes this further with the removal of kāhui ako – communities of learning.

“You cannot improve learning outcomes without addressing the conditions that shape children’s daily lives: cold homes, empty cupboards, chronic stress and insecure housing.”

Let’s talk about the so-called “investment in attendance.” On the surface, it sounds like a logical priority, getting more kids into school more often. But dig deeper, and it becomes clear: this is not about support. This is about surveillance.

Rather than asking why children are absent, the Budget doubles down on monitoring, data collection and punitive measures. It’s built on a deficit model: if children aren’t turning up, it must be because their whānau don’t care enough.

This narrative is not only wrong, it’s offensive.

For whānau grappling with food insecurity, unaffordable transport or housing uncertainty, getting children to school can be an impossible daily battle. And yet, instead of offering help, we get a crackdown.

This is not an investment in attendance. It’s an investment in blame. It treats poverty as a moral failing and families as the problem.

One of the most glaring examples of this misplaced approach is the slashing of funding for school lunches. The previous allocation of $8.60 per meal has been cut to just $3. Schools now report receiving “unidentifiable slop” and “mushy bread rolls.” For many tamariki, this is their main meal of the day. Cutting this support is not cost-saving. It’s cruelty.

If we truly want to lift attendance and engagement, we start by feeding children. We start by showing up for their most basic needs. Anything less is performative and cynical.

You cannot separate education from poverty. You cannot improve learning outcomes without addressing the conditions that shape children’s daily lives: cold homes, empty cupboards, chronic stress and insecure housing.

Yet this Budget does nothing to significantly lift incomes. There’s no expansion of food in schools, no bold investment in public housing, and no new support for benefit-dependent families. Instead, we get tougher sanctions and tighter eligibility.

“Our tamariki deserve better. Not just better outcomes, but better systems. Not just better teachers, but better values backing them up.”

And while public schools, kura kaupapa, and early childhood centres are being asked to do more with less, what is this government doing?

It is extending support to private education. While our public schools scramble for teacher aides and heating budgets, elite private institutions, already charging thousands in fees, are being handed public money.

Let’s call this what it is: the socialisation of risk and the privatisation of privilege.

What we needed was a child-centred, transformational budget.

A budget that would:

Properly fund Early Childhood Education, including equitable support for Māori and Pacific-led services.
Guarantee pay parity and fair working conditions for all kaiako.
A teacher aide for every ECE center and school classroom.
Provide universal access to nutritious meals in schools and centres.
Lift benefits and income support so families are not stuck in cycles of deprivation.
Invest in cross-sector, wraparound support – from health to housing to education – so that schools and centres are not expected to carry society’s burdens alone.

Above all, it would stop asking teachers to fix poverty with lesson plans. It would recognise that equity starts before the school bell rings.

Budget 2025 is not a vision. It is a spreadsheet of neglect. It tells us that we can afford tax cuts but not tamariki. That we can fund private privilege while public need goes unmet.

Educators are burnt out not because we don’t care, but because we care too much in a system that refuses to care with us. We are being asked to perform miracles without support, without recognition, and increasingly, without hope.

Our tamariki deserve better. Not just better outcomes, but better systems. Not just better teachers, but better values backing them up.

So let’s stop asking schools and ECE centres to do the impossible. Let’s fund the possible. Let’s invest upstream. Let’s build the future our tamariki have already earned.

Jennifer Neill has been in education since 2007, spanning both the ECE and Primary sectors. She currently teaches at Cashmere Avenue Primary School, as well as studying towards her PhD in education where she is researching the transition to school.

This piece was first presented by Jennifer at a post-budget breakfast hui in Te Whanganui-a-Tara on 23 May 2025.