Education union NZEI Te Riu Roa is taking legal action over the Government's move to defund resource teachers of Māori and literacy in Budget 2025.
The union filed for a judicial review in the Wellington High Court this morning.
It claims that Education Minister Erica Stanford had already made a decision to scrap the resource teacher services when she announced a three-week consultation on defunding them in February.
After the consultation closed in March, the teachers were not told of the outcome until Budget Day in May, when it was revealed that their roles would no longer be funded.
NZEI Te Riu Roa President Ripeka Lessels, herself a former resource teacher of Māori, is pleased the court will now look at the lawfulness of the defunding decision.
“I look forward to seeing whether the court believes the consultation with these teachers was fair and genuine, whether the decision was pre-determined, and whether the Government has upheld its obligations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.”
Lessels says her thoughts are with resource teachers of Māori and literacy and the many tamariki they work with. She says the teachers and their colleagues are heartbroken over what has happened.
“I find it very hard to understand why you would cut the numbers of frontline Māori education roles or specialist literacy roles when the Government says it is prioritising literacy,” she says.
While the Government has introduced some new education roles, the overall Māori education package funded in Budget 2025 reduced the numbers in the Māori education workforce by 31 fulltime equivalent roles. Despite an increase in structured literacy staffing, the overall literacy support workforce has been reduced by 43 fulltime equivalent roles.