New Zealand has a new agency running its school property portfolio, and the Government says it is the clearest sign yet that the old way of doing things is finished.
The New Zealand School Property Agency formally began operations today, taking over responsibility for building, managing and maintaining school property from the Ministry of Education. A dedicated board with a commercial focus will now run the portfolio, reporting to Education Minister Erica Stanford and Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop.
The shift follows a 2024 Ministerial Inquiry that found serious problems with how school property had been handled — poor value for money, poor service to schools, and limited transparency. Stanford was blunt about what the incoming Government found.
"When we came into Government, we inherited a school property system with around 350 projects that couldn't be delivered within the funding available, and classrooms costing around $1.2 million each," Stanford said. "It was a disaster."
Three Budgets later, the Government says it has put roughly $2.7 billion into school property — about $1.25 billion for new schools, classrooms and growth, and around $1.48 billion for maintaining and upgrading existing schools. That investment has, according to Stanford, fully funded nearly 1,600 additional classrooms and learning spaces, creating more than 23,000 additional student places. In 2024 alone, 583 classrooms were delivered — 31 per cent more than in 2023.
Maintenance funding has also been lifted sharply. Stanford says an $880 million increase across just two Budgets is more than double the increase over the previous six years combined.
The Government has also funded three new specialist schools — the first in nearly 50 years — and 142 specialist classrooms.
Central to the agency's case is a shift to offsite construction and repeatable classroom designs. Bishop says that approach has brought the cost of most classrooms below $650,000, down from the $1.2 million figure Stanford cited. More than $330 million saved through that method has been reinvested back into the portfolio.
"The move towards offsite construction and repeatable designs shows what can be achieved when infrastructure is delivered in a more standardised and disciplined way," Bishop said.
Bishop framed the new agency as giving the right approach a permanent home. "School property is significant public infrastructure, and it needs to be planned, funded and delivered with the same focus on value for money, cost control and certainty that we expect across the wider infrastructure system," he said. "Good infrastructure delivery comes down to making sound investment decisions and having a clear pipeline of work that can be delivered. NZSPA gives that approach a permanent home."
The Ministry of Education keeps responsibility for education policy and network decisions, including decisions about where growth is needed. Stanford says the separation is deliberate.
"The Ministry of Education will remain responsible for education policy and network decisions, including where growth is required," Stanford said. "This separation will allow the Ministry to focus on education outcomes, while the Board of NZSPA will be responsible for the school property portfolio."
The new agency was established through the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Act. Its board is chaired by former Foreign Minister Murray McCully, with Sarah Petersen as deputy chair, and Mark Binns, Rick Herd, Sue McCormack and Peter Alexander rounding out the governance team.
Stanford says the board has the right mix of skills for the job. "This Board has the commercial acumen and customer focus needed to improve the way infrastructure projects are delivered in the education sector," she said.
For schools across the country — including in Southland — the test will be whether the agency delivers what the inquiry and the investment figures promise: classrooms that are built on time, maintained properly, and don't cost a million dollars each.