Any investment in education is a step towards securing a brighter future, so the extra $500 million promised by the Government in a pre-Budget announcement yesterday is welcomed.
It comes with a catch, of course: Potentially higher student-to-teacher ratios and the possibility of a performance pay component.
Critics were quickto point out these and other perceived shortcomings in Hekia Parata's first Budget offering as Education Minister. Specifically, they rounded on the class size and performance-pay issue.
No one wants to see overcrowded classrooms and, while there is a real risk by relaxing the ratio, it needs also to be understood that is a mechanism to set funding across the country and actual class sizes will be set by schools. However, students with more one-to-one interaction with their teacher tend to do better and monitoring of progress is more easily managed so ratios must be tightly controlled.
How we keep track of the teacher's performance was bound be contentious, largely because it's so hard to quantify what a good teacher is. We will all have memories of teachers who inspired us - I know I do - but ask how you would recognise their performance and it all gets complicated. Teaching success is about so much more than pass rates so any criteria must cut across many different components of a teacher's role.
It won't be easy but applying base pay rates to all teachers at a certain level is simplistic and a faulty system that does not reward effort or excellence.
That there is considerable interest in our spending on education is as it should be. With $9.6 billion in spending in 2012-13 signalled, it is important the money is spent wisely.
It was New Zealand First that perhaps offered the most insightful analysis in stating that the devil will be in the detail. And, on that count, we will have to wait for in the Budget on May 24 before we can assess the likely impact.
