The government will spend NZ$21.7 million over five years to expand the School Onsite Training Programme, allowing trainee teachers to spend up to three days a week in classrooms while completing their formal study (RNZ).

Education Minister Erica Stanford announced the funding on 2 August 2026. The programme lets trainees work in schools alongside their university coursework, rather than relying on shorter practicum placements embedded in conventional teacher education pathways.

The programme has grown rapidly. It started with 147 places in 2024, expanded to 528 in 2026, and will reach 660 places in 2027 before settling at 704 places every year from 2028. It was opened to primary teacher training in 2025 in response to shortages across both primary and secondary schools.

That broader access has prompted a rebalancing. Because workforce data now shows a small oversupply of primary teachers, the government is weighting more training places towards secondary teacher training. The programme also targets places to rural and isolated communities by enabling providers to deliver online programmes, so people can train as teachers while remaining in their communities.

From 2027, participants in the School Onsite Training Programme will receive a stipend of NZ$20,660 to help cover course fees and living costs. The funding also covers an extra 50 places in the Teacher Bonding Scheme, increasing the 2026/27 cohort from 185 to 235. That scheme pays eligible teachers NZ$40,000 over five years to stay working at schools that struggle with staffing.

The funding has been reprioritised from elsewhere in the education portfolio. The classroom training scheme money comes from the Overseas Relocation Grant, which reimbursed early childhood teachers relocating to New Zealand. The Teacher Bonding Scheme expansion is funded from leftover money in the Voluntary Bonding Scheme, which closed to new entrants in the previous year.

An Education Review Office report found only one in five principals considered new teacher graduates ready for the classroom. The programme's classroom-intensive model is directly aimed at that readiness gap, giving trainees sustained, structured time in front of students before they graduate.

The announcement builds on a sequence of workforce investments across recent Budgets. Budget 2024 put $52.625 million over four years into attracting, training and retaining teachers (Ministry of Education). Budget 2026 adds a 4% increase to the tertiary fee subsidy for the 528 trainee teachers currently in the School Onsite Training Programme, according to Ministry of Education budget documents (Ministry of Education). Budget 2026 also raises early childhood education subsidy rates from 1 July 2026 under the same funding package.

The wider Budget 2026 education spend includes $136.9 million in operating expenditure over four years across 12 components to strengthen maths and literacy in primary learning (Ministry of Education), and $645.8 million in operating funding with $100.9 million in capital for learning support initiatives (Ministry of Education).

For those working in the sector, the decisions to watch are the shift in weighting towards secondary and the introduction of the stipend. The primary oversupply signal is modest, but it is the first time the programme has actively rebalanced places by sector rather than simply expanding across the board. The stipend, meanwhile, brings the School Onsite Training Programme closer to an employment model than a conventional study pathway, and the fact that it lands in 2027 rather than immediately gives providers and schools a transition window.

Reprioritisation rather than new money is the other detail worth noting. Closing the Overseas Relocation Grant to fund domestic classroom training signals a clear preference for growing the workforce at home rather than recruiting from offshore. Whether the trade-off pays off will depend on whether 704 annual places, plus a stipend, is enough to pull people into teaching who would not otherwise have entered the profession.