The government has announced moves to reduce primary and intermediate school class sizes, supported by hiring more teachers.

A Ministerial Advisory Group will also be set up to look at further changes to class sizes.

Education Minister Jan Tinetti announced the policy alongside Prime Minister Chris Hipkins at Remuera Intermediate School in Auckland this morning.

Both are due to attend a media briefing around 12.15pm.

It would see classes in Year 4 to Year 8 - right up until high school - shift from 29 students per teacher to 28 students per teacher by 2025, at a cost of $106 million over five years.

This ratio is higher than for younger years, with one teacher per 15 students at Year 1.

This would be supported by an increase in teacher numbers, with 320 more full-time teachers needed. The government says half that number is in line to start from next year.

Tinetti says research had shown Years 4 to 8 were critical for children's learning.

The 2019 National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement found 63 percent of students were achieving at the expected level in Year 4 in writing, dropping to only 35 percent achieving as expected by Year 8. For reading, the numbers were 63 percent at Year 4 dropping to 56 percent by Year 8.

"This is often where maths and literacy achievement can begin falling behind. That's why we are targeting these years with more teaching resource," says Tinetti.

"I'm not happy with the downward trends we are seeing in maths, reading and writing. More teachers, targeted to where they are most needed is a practical way we can improve results for our kids."

She says teacher salaries had increased by 18 percent since Labour took office in 2017, and put initiatives in place to increase primary and intermediate teacher numbers by more than 3000.

This included a $24m investment last year focusing on teacher recruitment, aiming to attract and train a further 1000 teachers.

Tinetti says the ministerial advisory group made up of experts from the education sector would look into class sizes in the long term. This would include looking at school funding mechanisms and staffing entitlements.

"I want to get a deeper understanding of the key areas where change is most needed," she says.

"I want this work to happen fast so I've asked for the terms of reference to look at the challenges our teachers and students currently face in the classroom, what our school leadership and management need, what any further decrease to class sizes will cost and whether it is achievable."

Teacher workload still being looked at

Hipkins told the briefing: "When we became the government five and a half years ago a shortage of teachers was one of the biggest challenges we were confronted with in the education portfolio.

"We know we have got some further work to do in terms of teacher workload and one of the things that has an impact is the number of teachers that we have, the levels of retention for the teachers that we have and also, the number of young people that they work with at any given time."

During Years 4-8 student achievement was either plateauing or declining in literacy and numeracy.

"Today we are announcing we are going to put in an extra 320 teachers into those year 4-8 ratios to start the journey of bringing those ratios down," the prime minister says.

The government was confident it would be able to recruit another 320 teachers across the country.

Schools would have a lot of options on how they use those teachers to improve outcomes for students.

Hipkins says it was the first significant change to ratios in terms of reducing class sizes since the last Labour government.

"The last time that National Party talked about class sizes in an election year it was because they were trying to increase them. That was back in 2014.

"We saw a decline in the number of people training to be teachers during the tenure of the last government and the reality is, that's not something you turn around in one or two years, it takes some time to turn that around and train the extra teachers that you need."

Three-month deadline for advisory group

Tinetti says once the advisory group was set up, she would ask that it report within three months. "That's quite a quick turnaround.

"This advisory group will look at primary right through to secondary."

The advisory group would look at what the optimum rates of ratios were that would bring success for young people and what they could achieve.

Tinetti says she had been working on a teacher workforce strategy for quite some time. Over the last little while, the ministry has accessed 1000 new teachers from overseas and was working on ways to train them.

"It's something we continue to work on."

- RNZ.