Right now, I am angry. Many of you will know that this week I shared an open letter on my public Number Agents Facebook page. This letter is emotional, and I make no apologies for that. In fact, it had been drafted to just send to our local Ministry of Education (MOE) office, but after I was told that one of our lovely children with ASD will have any behaviour funding (as little as it currently is anyway) concluded because he has had five terms' worth, well, let's say it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I have shared the letter at the end of this blog post for anyone who has not seen it. Feel free to go to my Facebook page and share it if it resonates with what you are experiencing. I don’t presume to speak for you, but I know right now, this is the experience of many.
Right now, we have a system intent on putting the cart before the horse. While the current government has accelerated and compounded this issue, they didn't start this pattern; in fact, for as long as I can remember (18 years of principalship), this has been the case.
There is a total disconnect between those who set curriculum direction and have control over how support is provided in schools and the actual people on the ground bringing learning to life each day. If you read this blog, you will see I am all about putting evidence-based practice into action. I also believe we can have it all: we can embrace childhood, discovery, play, work relationally, be trauma-informed, understand how learning works, follow the instructional hierarchy, work in a neurodiversity-affirming way, embrace creativity, and foster knowledge. We can have it all, but to have it all, we need to first work on the horse, not the cart!
Any expert worth their salt, when asked about the Principles of Instruction, will put 'attended focus' right up there as one of the most important things we need to have in order for us to be able to teach and for children to be able to learn.
So, let's just pick that one thing, because anything I have read or listened to in regards to the 'Science of Learning' will point to attention—the gaining and keeping of attention.
Right now, our classrooms are brimming at the seams with needs. In a classroom of 20, there are likely to be at least five children who are neurodivergent (diagnosed or not), often with needs that present as 'behaviour'. Five, in fact, is possibly on the very light side. If teaching in a new entrant class, it is likely that over half the class have a need for co-regulation just to be able to keep them in the classroom.
Whatever the number, these days our classes abound with big feelings—big feelings that often spill over into physical or verbal aggression. Then, on top of this, we have many children with specific learning needs that need one-to-one support to access the curriculum (whatever it looks like).
If your situation is anything like ours, none of these children qualify for any sort of funding. Despite their struggles, they are not considered 'bad' enough in our deficit-based system to warrant any type of support. When support is sought, this looks like observation after observation, meeting after meeting, without access to 'experts', and possibly, if you are very lucky, an hour a day of resourcing to meet the needs of this child.
Right, back to attention. For us to teach and for children to learn, everyone I know who would be labelled as an expert puts attention at the top of the list. I would not disagree with this. If I am a novice and learning a new skill, I have to pay attention to be able to make progress. In fact, as a novice at something, that ability to pay attention is vital. It is so easy to become cognitively overloaded (says I, who while writing this is listening to the instrumental version of my favourite songs to prevent becoming distracted by the lyrics).
How does that look in a classroom, where at least five (very likely more) need an adult to co-regulate with them to even make this attended focus a possibility? How does it look for children trying to pay attention while they are hyper-vigilant and worried that their classmate may suddenly start throwing things, swearing, and toppling chairs because they don't have that co-regulation opportunity or another safe space to go where they can find a trusted adult? How does it look for those children, teetering because they left the house without breakfast or amongst raised voices, who didn’t get any sleep the night before or who just need a bit of a break and a reset with an adult who cares?
I am not against a rigorous curriculum, I am not against knowledge, I am not against evidence-based practice. What I am against is the fact we continue to put the cart before the horse, somehow convinced that this will make all the difference in the world.
If we don't prioritise people, relationships, and children, if we don't understand the co-regulation needs of so many of our children, if we expect teachers to teach a class of 20-30 children on their own, without the support of at least one other adult in the class, then no amount of polishing the cart will make an iota of difference.
It takes funding to do this and that funding should not have to come from colour runs, raffles, chocolate fundraisers, pizza lunches, sausage sizzles and Halloween fundraisers!
We first need to build the capacity of our schools to cater for the children in their care; then we can work on getting their attention.
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To Whomever Will Listen:
I am writing this letter in an earnest attempt to be heard, making a heartfelt plea for our most vulnerable children and the dedicated teachers who give their blood, sweat, and tears every day to keep them engaged in education.
Like every kura around Aotearoa, our school is struggling to meet the diverse behavioural needs of our children. Over the last fifteen years, we have worked tirelessly to personally fund and drive our own learning, becoming developmentally responsive and neuroscience-informed. We have worked hard to understand the stress response and the impact of trauma, learning how to respond in ways that truly make a difference. We’ve also been advancing our understanding of neurodiversity, striving to create a neurodiversity-affirming space. We’ve invested vast amounts of our own time and operational funding into this, recognising just how critical this work is. Not only that we have driven our own learning in terms of the principles of learning and teaching, starting with structured literacy eight years ago and flowing into structured maths two years ago.
We’ve prioritised people over property, investing heavily in teacher aides and creating a regulation space for our children. We aim to keep class sizes small because we know how much of a positive impact it has on learning and wellbeing.
We understand that the punitive processes of stand-down and suspension offer no benefit, so up until now, we have not considered those approaches as an option.
I have been the principal here for 18 years, and things have never been so challenging. Our approaches have shaped an amazing space where our children thrive, but the needs we are trying to meet have greatly increased over time. New entrants coming into school now are not what they were ten years ago; they need increasing levels of support that one teacher alone cannot provide.
Financially, like every school, we have faced immense challenges over the last five years. There is no funding for curriculum needs, and everything we wish to have must be funded via grants.
Every day, teachers are coping with immense pressure. Teachers who have our most needy students face daily incidents, often leading to our spaces being trashed and classes being disrupted. Teachers are often in the line of fire when big emotions erupt, all while trying to ensure the safety of all other children.
Despite their high needs, these children—if they are lucky—receive up to two hours a day of teacher aide time, though more likely it is one hour, or nothing at all. Because we have good processes in place, when a child actually does get support, it is often withdrawn when the behaviour seems to calm down, Since it was the support that settled the behaviour, it quickly arises again once the support is gone. Then we are back at the beginning, pleading for support while countless observations are carried out. An even sadder fact is that any behaviour support will be concluded after five terms regardless of need.
Getting the support our children need feels like jumping through hoops unnecessarily, when we could easily take a more direct path to our destination. If a child has dropped off the caseload for whatever reason, we then have to reapply just to have them back on the ‘books.’ This process seems to involve endless observations and meetings with very little action. If talking around in circles was the cure-all for children with behavioural difficulties, then we’d have no problems at all.
Amidst these high needs, teachers are expected to be teaching an hour of reading, writing, and maths a day, not forgetting the rest that we have to cover. By the look of the new knowledge-based syllabus (it looks more like a syllabus than a curriculum) that is coming out, we may have to increase our school hours—9am till 9pm should do.
We face a real dilemma right now. This year, we have been able to fund two teacher aides through our operational funding and a small amount of behavioural funding. We were also able to appoint a teacher aide for the new entrant room during Terms 3 and 4, using operational funding, essentially reallocating from budget lines that were unspent. In 2026, our roll drops again—not for any suspicious reason, but simply because we have two year levels with really low numbers; enrolment zones will do that to you! While the roll might drop, the extreme needs remain, with even less funding available to provide the necessary support.
This drop sees us truly struggling. By all accounts, we will be able to afford only one teacher aide for the whole school, using a little bit of operational funding and hopefully some behavioural funding. Fingers crossed (because the crossing of fingers is a very real strategy right now.)
How is that one teacher aide supposed to cope? What happens when all of our neurodiverse children are having a bad day? How can I morally leave teachers without any support? As a school, we manage behaviours that many schools would probably need to make referrals for; we have skilled staff committed to working in a way that regulates rather than escalates, but they are only one person, working to cater for the many needs of their class.
Many of the children that desperately require extra support would no longer be enrolled in other schools. They would have been through the stand-down, suspension, and expulsion process and possibly be totally lost to our system. I steadfastly refuse to do that, but when does this refusal start to come at too great a cost? Without teacher aides, how can I expect my staff to cope? I myself teach three days a week and I know how difficult it can be to meet the needs of everyone and keep them safe, how exhausted you are at the end of the day.
Let’s face it, a shiny new curriculum/syllabus is absolutely of no use to anyone if we are just surviving day to day.
I write this letter with tears in my eyes. After 18 years as a teaching principal, I don’t know how much longer I can continue in this job without the funding and support our teachers and children need. How can I morally go on, putting this pressure on my teachers every day?
I sit here, trying to set a budget with money I don’t have. But with a roll that has dropped slightly, I also need to prioritise paying partially for a teacher. Once that is done and the known expenses are accounted for, there is enough for one extra person—one extra person to meet all of those needs (and that is only if we do get some funding for them next year).
If we want to make a difference in education, we need to start with first things first. I won’t be greedy; four teacher aides in our school of nine classrooms would be great, I could make do with that. Or here’s a very novel idea: if a child has a diagnosis and significant behavioural challenges that put themselves and others at risk, just fund them fully throughout their schooling career. Stop making us jump through hoops, stop making us grovel, stop making us prove the need, stop making us reach out in desperation, and actually ensure these children can have a successful journey through school.
When it all boils down to it, ensuring children get the support they need should not even be something I need to worry about. Shouldn’t it just be a given?
Is anyone listening?
Leslee Allen
Kaurihohore School
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