The government will spend NZ$21.7 million over five years to help more trainee teachers learn in real classrooms while they study (RNZ).

Education Minister Erica Stanford announced the funding on 2 August 2026. Normally, people training to be teachers do short stints in schools as part of their university course. This programme lets them spend up to three days a week in a classroom instead, working alongside experienced teachers.

The programme has grown fast. It began with 147 places in 2024, grew to 528 in 2026, and will reach 660 places in 2027 before settling at 704 places every year from 2028. It opened to primary school teacher training in 2025 because of shortages at both primary and secondary levels.

Because workforce data now shows a small oversupply of primary teachers, the government is shifting more training places towards secondary schools. The programme also focuses on rural areas by offering online courses, so people can train as teachers without having to move away from their communities.

From 2027, trainees will get NZ$20,660 to help cover their course fees and living costs. The funding also adds 50 places to a scheme that pays teachers NZ$40,000 over five years to stay at schools that struggle to find staff. That scheme will grow from 185 to 235 teachers in its 2026/27 group.

The money is being shifted from other parts of the education budget. The classroom training funding comes from a grant that helped early childhood teachers with the cost of moving to New Zealand from overseas. The staffing scheme expansion is paid for with leftover money from an older version of the same scheme, which stopped taking new entrants last year.

A report by the Education Review Office found only one in five principals thought new teacher graduates were ready for the classroom. The programme is designed to fix that gap by giving trainees lots of real teaching time before they finish their studies.

The announcement follows other recent spending on teachers. Budget 2024 put $52.625 million over four years into attracting, training and keeping teachers (Ministry of Education). Budget 2026 adds a 4% increase to the tertiary fee subsidy for the 528 trainees currently in the programme, according to Ministry of Education budget documents (Ministry of Education). Budget 2026 also raises early childhood education subsidy rates from 1 July 2026.

The wider Budget 2026 education spend includes $136.9 million over four years to improve maths and literacy in primary schools (Ministry of Education), and $645.8 million in operating funding plus $100.9 million in capital for learning support (Ministry of Education).

The broader context here is that the shift towards secondary training and the new stipend are the two changes most likely to matter in practice. The oversupply of primary teachers is small, but it is the first time the programme has deliberately adjusted places by sector instead of just expanding everything at once. The stipend makes the programme feel more like a job than traditional study, and starting it in 2027 rather than right away gives schools and training providers time to adjust.

The other thing worth noting is that the government chose to reprioritise existing money rather than spend new funds. Closing the overseas relocation grant to pay for domestic classroom training points to a preference for growing the teacher workforce at home rather than recruiting from abroad. Whether that works depends on whether 704 places a year, plus a stipend, is enough to attract people who would not otherwise have chosen teaching.