Call for better resourcing to combat challenging education environment

Thursday, 28 May 2026

Educators hope to see greater resource put into the sector when the Government unveils the Budget on Thursday, to help in areas such as stability and learning support.

Ahead of the Budget, education think tank Aotearoa Educators Collective has released the results from a survey of teachers and others who work in education.

The survey showed 89.4% of educators believed the education system was moving in the wrong direction, while 7.7% felt it was on the right track, but had some concerns. Only 2.4% felt education was moving in the right direction.

According to the survey, educators’ biggest priorities in the Budget were: inclusive education and learning support; curriculum support; student mental health and wellbeing services; and teacher attraction and retention.

Raewyn Eden, a senior lecturer in teacher education at Victoria University of Wellington based in Palmerston North, said she wasn’t surprised at the findings. She is a member of Aotearoa Educators Collective and previously worked at Massey University.

She said the survey results showed what people across education had been asking for, particularly more resources to support the work of teachers, who did “incredibly challenging work at great personal cost”.

“There’s been a lot of interest in supporting learning support. For example, I know classrooms are more and more challenging, teachers are seeing more and more children with diverse needs, but also resourcing around professional development, supporting lower class numbers so teachers can work with students in more focused ways so they’re not stretched.

“Support for addressing the whole range of challenges that turn up at schools.”

Eden, whose expertise was maths education, said another important issue was stability, as teachers had to deal with “a constantly changing education landscape” through changes of government, new policies and curriculum reform.

“It’s a long game and there are no silver bullets.”

She wanted to see Government investment where educators knew it would take the system in the right direction.

In recent years she said teachers had been given less of a say about what happened in education and it was instead set by others such as politicians or people with vested interests.

Working in teacher training, Eden saw students who wanted to become teachers. She said being a teacher was a rewarding job but it was also challenging.

“We’re cognisant of the fact we’re preparing teachers to enter a professional role where the landscape is really difficult. In my 30 something years of being in education I’ve not seen a more challenging environment than the one we’ve got at the moment.

“It’s a dilemma to be preparing student teachers who are going to bring a huge amount of energy into that space and want to do a good job, but it’s going to be challenging for them.

“We continue to see really significant turnover. So we see new teachers enter the profession and there’s a high level of attrition within the first five years of teaching. That’s a resourcing issue for the Government.”

Eden said teachers remained hopeful the energy and goodwill they put into their classrooms would be noticed.

“The education system is very much being held together by the generosity of people that are prepared to turn up when it’s exhausting and when there’s this huge pressure and this constant landscape of change.”