The Government has committed $131 million in this year’s Budget toward new learning initiatives aimed at improving literacy and numeracy outcomes for students in Years 0-10.
According to a report by Stuff, Erica Stanford announced the funding package on Monday, saying most of the investment would go towards maths, reading and writing programmes, while $43.5 million would be allocated to workforce training and support.
The package includes hands-on maths resources and games for Year 0-8 classrooms, 36 additional teachers to provide targeted maths assistance and a new times table and division assessment for Year 5 students.
New literacy initiatives will include workbooks for Years 4 and 5, a digital writing tool for Year 6-8 students, a 12-week structured literacy support programme for struggling learners and a new literacy assessment for Year 2 students, Stuff has reported.
“Today’s literacy and maths package delivers substantive investment into twelve key initiatives that will help to embed generational reforms in our primary and intermediate schools. 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, as quoted by Stuff.
“These investments begin to level the playing field, reducing costs for schools and backing evidence-led reforms.”
The Government also announced a new Reading Action Plan, titled Read to Succeed, which will sit alongside the previously launched Make it Count Maths Action Plan and Write it Right Writing Action Plan.
The announcement coincided with the release of updated Curriculum Insights and Progress Study results, which Stanford said showed “statistically significant improvement” in student writing and maths performance.
The study, which now tracks about 6000 students annually across years 3, 6 and 8, measures progress in reading, writing and mathematics.
“Student achievement data sampled across New Zealand in late 2025, only three terms into the reforms, shows encouraging early results,” Stanford said, as quoted by Stuff.
The results showed Year 6 students improved by 5% in writing and 6% in mathematics between 2024 and 2025. Year 8 students also recorded gains, with maths up 1% and writing improving by 4%.
Reading performance, however, dipped slightly, with Year 3 students down 1% and Year 8 students down 2%. Researchers described those changes as “statistically stable”.
According to a report by Stuff, Maths remained the weakest-performing subject overall, with only 25% of Year 3 students, 26% of Year 6 students and 24% of Year 8 students meeting or exceeding curriculum expectations. Reading results were significantly stronger across all year levels.
“These curriculum insights were conducted just after three and a half terms of implementation, so not even a full year, after such a significant reform program,” Stanford said, as quoted by Stuff.
“We were expecting achievement to remain stable while schools embedded these changes. So, to be already seeing areas improvement is incredibly encouraging,” Stuff has reported.
Stanford said it would take more time to determine whether the gains could be sustained long-term, but described the findings as an important early sign of progress.
“Today’s results are the first step in this journey,” she said, as quoted by Stuff.