Strikes Get the Blame, Because Government Backed the Wrong Investments

by Rebecca Thomas

Image NZ Herald

The government keeps telling us they’ve “invested in education.”

They boast of having their “eye on the ball” for equity.

They cry, “We’re delivering world-class tools and resources.”

But step inside any classroom and the truth shows itself.

Teachers don’t see millions of dollars that have been spent. They see overcrowded rooms, children with high and complex needs but no support staff, principals begging parents to run sausage sizzles and school discos just to keep teacher aides in front of tamariki.

So if this is what “investment” looks like — where has the money really gone?

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I think of last Thursday morning.

Thirty-two children in front of me. Not the usual size — the other class has been split because there are no warm bodies to cover a colleague grieving a death in their whānau.

At least seven of these students come with learning needs that should carry full-time support staff, or they have regulation needs so fragile they react to each other’s trauma like popping candy.

By the tenth attempt to settle the room before morning tea — my voice already hoarse and broken from teaching through sickness — one child has crawled behind the classroom door, wedging himself between the wall and the frame, swinging the door into his own body again and again in a kind of self-soothing rhythm. Another is already in tears because she knows she can’t keep up with the writing task. A third darts like a spark across the room, snatching pens from others just to feel seen. At the back, a boy rocks in his chair, one hand fiddling with the window catch, ready to lash out with a shouted swear if any classmate happens to walk past.

I could describe what the others are doing too — the constant hum of distraction, the small fires flaring in every corner — but those who stand in classrooms already know. They don’t need me to paint the picture. They live it, every day.

And there, on the shelf, sits the government’s answer: a glossy new maths workbook.

Unopened.

That’s the “investment” teachers are living with.

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The money trail

$30 million on maths workbooks and resources. Most of it went to overseas publishers:

• Oxford University Press (UK)

• Maths — No Problem! (licensed offshore)

• Numicon (UK, via OUP)

• PR1ME (Scholastic, US-owned; printed offshore)

  
  

And about $3m of that wasn’t for teaching at all — just for shipping and warehousing.

“I can’t wait to crack open the government’s glossy maths workbook — because nothing helps an anxious child regulate faster than a worksheet.” — said no teacher ever.

SMART, the new national assessment tool. Contract awarded to Janison (Australia). Millions will flow offshore over five years to build a platform for more testing. Not more teachers. Not more aides.

“I can’t wait to log into the new Australian assessment tool. Because what my kids really need is another test, not another adult in the room.” — said no teacher ever.

Hundreds of millions on buildings. Budget 2025 set aside $700m for school property and an “accelerated” $413m package. Ministers proudly call this “education spending.” But this is about GDP and tradie jobs, not the staff inside those buildings.

“I can’t wait to see the impact of these new lightbulbs — apparently they’re lots of lumens — on my class. And I guess the old ones just head to landfill.” — said no teacher ever.

PLD contracts. Providers continue to profit from government-funded professional learning contracts. They pedal government priorities ‘science of learning’ mantra, cash the cheques, and move on.

“I can’t wait to spend a few days away from my school on the Curriculum Roadshow, while overseas ‘experts’ tell me about the knowledge-rich curriculum that will apparently transform my neurodiverse students. Meanwhile I’ll be checking my phone frantically, hoping there isn’t another fight in the playground, or another angry parent demanding to know why their child’s class has been split again.” — said no principal ever.

And when teachers, support staff, and principals say: “We can’t do this anymore. We need fair pay. We need real support.” They are told: “There’s only 1% available.”

The same government that can spend $30m on offshore maths books and millions more on freight, the same government that can send contracts to Australian testing companies and roll out billion-dollar property builds, suddenly becomes deaf when the people doing the work ask for more than crumbs.

When Luxon and Collins say, “Strikes hurt kids,” they want the public to miss the truth:

It’s not striking that hurts children.

It’s refusing to fund classrooms properly.

It’s choosing GDP gains over genuine investment in people.

It’s treating education like a product to buy, not a public service to honour.

This is the narcissist’s trick: blame the people with heart, while shifting the money elsewhere.

They spent on everything but people — and now they blame the very people still holding the education system together.

Why the refusal to listen?

Because listening would make the truth obvious: the money has been spent in the wrong places.

It has been spent to look good for investors, not to strengthen classrooms.

It has been spent like a business investment, not like a public service.

It has been spent on products, not people.

And if they admitted that, they’d have to confront what everyone already sees: that the system is failing not because of workers, but because of government choices.

There is money.

But teacher pay doesn’t fit the government’s growth strategy.

Teacher salaries?

Those don’t make a quarterly growth chart look good. They don’t reassure investors. They don’t give ministers a ribbon-cutting moment.

So the people who carry our children’s futures are left with a 1% envelope.

Since the beginning this government has treated education like a commodity.

A business deal.

A set of contracts.

But education is not a product. It is human. It is care, given daily, often invisibly, by teachers, principals, support staff.

And when those people are ignored, when they are vilified for striking, while billions leak offshore — that is not investment. That is failure of care.

Who is really hurting our kids?

Who is really choosing GDP showmanship over genuine investment in people?

The answer is no longer hidden. 

It’s written on every exhausted face, and every classroom still waiting for help that never arrives.

That's what educators are striking for!