Kia Mahi Kotahi: A Principal's response

KI MAHI KOTAHI: WORKING TOGETHER - Learning Support Workforce Plan 2025-2029 NZEI TE RIU ROA

Those of us at the coalface have watched as several Learning Support reviews, evaluations and promises of long awaited change have passed us by. It is well past the time for some appropriate government investment in Learning Support in Aotearoa; ‘Kia Mahi Kotahi’ released this week by NZEI Te Riu Roa signposts the way.

Prioritising Learning Support is the single most important investment into Education that the government can make to increase positive long term social, health and economic outcomes, as well as the shorter term outcomes of school attendance, engagement and achievement, teacher and principal wellbeing and retention, and most importantly the basic human right to a fair and inclusive education.

Kia Mahi Kotahi is clearly set out in two sections: a Workforce Investment Plan and a section unpacking System Change Design Principles.

The Workforce Investment Plan is a well considered and costed framework of recommendations for government expenditure over the next 4 - 5 years. It provides clarity of priorities and cost breakdowns that should be carefully examined by the government.

And yes: it represents a significant Vote Education expenditure, but short term governments are prone to short term fixes and bandaid approaches. If we are solely looking at this spending from an economic point of view, international and local evidence tells us that if we invest early to support the learning, development and wellbeing of young children, especially those with the most complex needs and backgrounds, the ‘Return on Investment’ is significant. Of course the ideal scenario is a bi-partisan approach to education, or at least to Learning Support within education.

The principles outlined in Part 2, that should inform and underpin investment decisions, are:

• Putting the child at the centre

• Invest early, invest now

• Give effect to te Tiriti o Waitangi

• Publicly funded, publicly provided

• Equity and consistency of quality and access nationally

Reading through this section several key points stood out to me.

Te tamaiti at the putake o te kaupapa is a central tenet of our New Zealand education system. Although many would say this is a rose-tinted view of our system and, as this report points out, ‘we still have a system that throws up barriers every step of the way for too many’

Certainly in my consultancy and training work focused on responding to complex behaviours, as well as my observations of principal, board, MoE and school community perspectives across the country, I have become more and more aware that responses to the Learning Support needs of children with dysregulated stress response systems often don’t place the child’s needs at the centre. Punitive approaches prioritise the needs and wishes of adults. How refreshing to have a Learning Support model that supports all practitioners to better understand complex needs and to respond in the interest of every individual learner.

The emphasis within the recommendations on young people’s mental health is an important inclusion: ‘access to a counsellor for every primary and intermediate student that needs one’. Given my background in trauma-informed practice and related neuroscience I would caution that the concept of counselling needs to be widened to one of therapy. Many of our young people with mental health and nervous system conditions and states, including dysregulated behaviours, need therapy that supports lower brain regulation, integration and/or healing, rather than traditional talk therapy and counselling approaches that require good capacity in cortical and cognitive areas of the brain. This is why initiatives and therapies that involve more holistic, sensory-responsive, physiological, culturally located approaches often result in more positive long term outcomes. Wellbeing funding for youth workers, teacher aide-led nurture groups, art, drama, music or animal therapy or other somatosensory responses should be part of an effective mental health response. And in fact ERO’s 2024 report about counselling in primary schools identified that about 70% of the people providing so-called counselling were not registered counsellors.

Occupational Therapists are a much undervalued and under-resourced profession within our Education System. The more I learn about the brain and nervous system, as well as about disabled and distressed learners within our schools and centres, the more I realise that we need many, many more of these skilled professionals to help us to understand and appropriately respond to the sensory needs of our learners.

Last month Minister Erica Stanford visited Glenview School and my colleagues and I had the opportunity to impress upon her how important investment in support staff is for the long term success of all our children. We told her about the great gains we had seen here in Porirua East for our children with the most complex needs and backgrounds of adversity and the relational and regulating ‘therapy’ that our kaiawhina and teacher aides have provided. I shared with the Minister my observations while on sabbatical in the United Kingdom last year: many high schools I visited, who were achieving great academic and social outcomes, had elevated the status of their support staff. They had prioritised pastoral care, relational inclusion and trauma-informed approaches and trained and paid many of their support staff in recognition of the skills and impact they bring. Some schools had promoted non-teaching staff to senior levels of school leadership.

If our government does nothing else it MUST commit substantially more funds to classroom support staff - and this should be centrally funded.

Education for all children and youth is a fundamental human right, enshrined in various international and New Zealand human rights declarations and legislation. The Kia Mahi Kotahi report shows us how fair and equitable investment in all our learners is not only a no-brainer for ALL young people to succeed, but also makes such good sense on ethical, economic, scientific, and social levels.

Lynda Knight-de Blois is Principal of Glenview School in Porirua East. She provides training, PLD and advice in Relational Neuroscience and Trauma-Informed Education.

Ian Lambie https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/items/74a28f93-d883-4278-8740-a3d177303937

Lynn A Karoly and others: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30083418/

James J Heckman https://heckmanequation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/F_HeckmanDeficitPieceCUSTOM-Generic_052714-3-1.pdf

Bruce D Perry, Graham Allen and others https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a789e45ed915d07d35b1184/earlyintervention-smartinvestment.pdf

https://ero.govt.nz/our-research/someone-to-talk-to-evaluation-of-counselling-in-schools-counselling