If We Are Going to Spend Half a Million Dollars on Excellence, Let Us Widen the Definition

by Rebecca Thomas

My suggested replacement of the Excellence Awards this year

I need to write this thoughtfully. This is not me being bitter.

Because I believe in celebrating good schools. I believe in acknowledging kaiako who pour themselves into communities and refuse to give up. I believe in telling stories of hope.

But I also sit in Tai Tokerau.

And here, excellence does not always look like a polished graph of achievement and attendance scores.

Here, excellence looks like a teacher staying after school to de-escalate a child who has learned that anger is safer than trust. It looks like a kaiāwhina who know exactly which whānau member to call when attendance dips — not to reprimand, but to wrap around. It looks like a principal who absorbs the hurt of a community quietly, because someone has to hold the mauri steady.

It looks like trauma held gently in classrooms with cracked plastic chairs and broken table legs.

And when I read that sixteen schools will receive $20,000 each through the New Zealand Education Excellence Awards | Ngā Tohu Kairangi Mātauranga o Aotearoa, I do not feel envy.

I analyse the maths.

Sixteen awards, $20,000 each, $320,000 in prize money. A figure that is likely closer to half a million dollars once ceremony, judging and production costs are included.

Half a million dollars.

And in the same week, I am told again that a case has been closed because the service is overwhelmed. That funding is thin. That we can apply for only three types of support this term because resources are stretched across the region.

We have no RTLit. We have no RT Māori. This same government saw to that.

Those roles once carried deep, specialist literacy and cultural support into schools like ours. Now, when a Year 5 child still cannot decode confidently and carries shame, we are told to manage internally.

Internally means teachers who are already holding complex behavioural needs, intergenerational trauma, housing instability, hunger, grief, and transience.

Internally means you “do your best.”

And our kaiako do.

They do more than their best.

Our kaiako are counsellors without counsellor funding. They are literacy specialists without specialist release. They are attendance officers without attendance budgets. They are cultural navigators without formal titles.

Quietly.

Without nomination forms or promotional videos.

When I read the awards criteria and see that winning schools may have their stories used in media campaigns and Ministry promotion, I understand that this is not simply celebration. It is a narrative. It is storytelling by those in power about what works in communities that were never broken.

But in communities like mine, what works is rarely media worthy.

What works for us is a 4% attendance lift in a whānau navigating housing displacement. What works for us is a child not being stood down this term. What works for us is rebuilding trust after five years of fractured leadership. What works for us is knowing that when the fight breaks out, you do not shame, you regulate.

Our excellence is incremental, relational, hard-won.

It does not always photograph well.

And so the equity question presses.

What would $20,000 mean here?

It would mean additional teacher aide hours for the child whose behaviour masks bereavement. It might mean some funded release time so a kaiako can design culturally grounded literacy support instead of cobbling it together at night. It could mean contracted trauma-informed training across the whole staff, not just whoever can squeeze into a webinar. It would possibly mean being able to say “yes” to support instead of “sorry, that fund has closed.”

Twenty thousand dollars is not symbolic in a community like ours.

It is oxygen.

When funding is thin and we are told weekly that certain pathways are no longer available, it is difficult not to ask whether concentrating large sums into prize money is the most equitable design for a system that knows inequity is unevenly distributed.

This post is not about punishing success. I do not begrudge any school recognition. But equity is not sameness. Equity means resourcing where the need is greatest.

Equity means understanding that a school achieving steady NCEA growth in a stable, well-resourced community is not carrying the same load as a school absorbing layered trauma without specialist backup.

Equity means asking whether awards could be structured differently — perhaps requiring winning schools to mentor others, perhaps redistributing a portion of funds into regional equity pools, perhaps ring-fencing parallel support for communities facing the steepest barriers.

Because right now, the message risks sounding like this:

If you show measurable improvement within the reform frame (showing compliance works), you will be rewarded. And in my community, improvement is slower because the wounds are deeper. Our teachers are not less capable. Our learners are not less worthy. It’s just that our context is heavier.

When services close cases and thresholds rise and specialist roles disappear, the burden shifts quietly onto classroom teachers.

And they ‘do their best’, without trophies and ceremonies.

If we are going to spend half a million dollars on excellence, then let us widen our definition.

Let us define excellence as refusing to stand down the child who scares everyone else. Let us define excellence as sustained relational repair, as holding cultural identity at the centre without waiting for permission. And if we truly believe in equity, then our funding mechanisms must reflect it.

Celebration is not wrong.

But celebration without redistribution risks becoming performance — a spotlight that warms those already visible while others remain in shadow. When recognition brings additional funding and status, the gap between schools can quietly widen rather than close.

And then there is the leadership question.

If accolades and extra resource tend to flow toward schools already positioned to show polished gains, where will ambitious leaders choose to go? Will they step into communities that are challenging, where progress is slow and often unseen? Or will they gravitate toward schools more likely to look award-winning on a CV?

If we reward shine more than struggle, we risk signalling — however unintentionally — that the hardest contexts matter less. And those are precisely the places that most need our strongest leaders.

In my community, and probably many others like mine, we do not need applause but we do need partnership. We need the ability to say “yes” when a child needs support. That is not bitterness.

And if public education is truly collective, then equity should not be a speech at an awards ceremony. Instead it should be the starting point of every funding decision.