School High Health Needs Fund and Supplementary Learning Support NZ

Your child's ORS application was declined. The school says there's no money. But there are other funding streams — most parents are never told about them.

The Ongoing Resourcing Scheme covers approximately the top 1% of New Zealand students. The other children with significant needs aren't left without any pathway — they're just left to navigate a more fragmented system. Understanding what's available, and knowing how to push the school to access it, is the practical work of advocacy in New Zealand right now.

What Is the School High Health Needs Fund?

The School High Health Needs Fund (SHHNF) is identified as an alternative support pathway for students who do not receive ORS and whose medical or health needs require additional adult supervision or support during the school day.

Students who typically qualify include those with:

• Insulin-dependent diabetes requiring monitoring and intervention
• Severe epilepsy requiring oversight and emergency medication administration
• Severe allergies requiring trained supervision (e.g., anaphylaxis management)
• Tracheostomy care or other complex medical procedures
• Serious physical health conditions requiring regular nursing or first-aid interventions

SHHNF is applied for by the school, not the parent. The principal and SENCO (or Learning Support Coordinator) must submit the application through the Ministry of Education. The school receives a resource — typically in the form of additional teacher aide hours or funding for a health support worker — attached to the specific student.

If your child has a significant health condition that requires ongoing management during school hours and the school hasn't mentioned SHHNF, ask them directly: "Has an SHHNF application been submitted for my child, and if not, why not?" Put this in writing.

What Is Supplementary Learning Support?

Supplementary Learning Support (SLS) is an alternative support tier for students who do not receive ORS. It is intended to provide additional support for students with significant learning needs who need more than standard operational funding can deliver.

SLS is not a fixed entitlement — it's allocated based on regional priority and available resourcing. This means two things:

First, ask the school's Learning Support Coordinator and the RTLB cluster how your child will be considered for any available SLS support, including whether current RTLB involvement or an updated learning support profile would help the prioritisation process.

Second, parents must maintain consistent communication with the LSC to ensure the child remains visible in the system. Schools serving large catchments with high-needs populations tend to have more SLS demand than available supply, which is why the queue exists and why advocacy matters.

Support for inclusion funding: What Schools Get and How It Should Be Used

All state and state-integrated schools and kura receive Support for inclusion funding (formerly the Special Education Grant, or SEG), with the amount calculated using a base amount and per-student funding.

The critical point for parents: Support for inclusion funding belongs to the school, not to individual students. When a school says "we don't have the funding to give your child more teacher aide hours," they may be making a resourcing choice rather than stating a fact. Schools have discretion in how they distribute this funding across their population.

If your child has documented needs and an IEP with specific goals that require teacher aide support, you can request the school provide a written explanation of how Support for inclusion funding is currently allocated and why your child's IEP goals cannot be met within it. This is a reasonable request, not an aggressive one, and it tends to prompt more careful consideration of resourcing decisions.

Learning Support Coordinators: Who They Are and How to Work with Them

The Learning Support Coordinator (LSC) role was established and expanded significantly through Budget 2025, which provided $192.5 million for about 650 additional LSC full-time teacher equivalents for state and state-integrated schools with Year 1–8 students by 2028. Unlike SENCOs who often carry full teaching loads, LSCs are dedicated solely to learning support coordination.

The LSC is the school's primary contact with external Ministry specialists and the RTLB cluster. Their job is to identify students with needs early, coordinate school-based supports, and broker referrals to the right external services. In practice, they can help coordinate school requests for support, including SHHNF applications and SLS priority discussions.

If your school has an LSC, request a meeting specifically with them — not just the classroom teacher. Come prepared with your child's recent assessments, a list of specific barriers to participation, and the IEP goals that aren't being met. The LSC can help coordinate RTLB involvement, discuss SLS priority, and coordinate an SHHNF application with the school. They cannot do any of this without knowing the full picture.

What to Do When the School Says There's No Funding

"We don't have the resources" is the most common phrase parents of disabled children hear from schools. It's sometimes accurate, often incomplete, and occasionally used as a way to manage expectations downward rather than escalate internally.

When you hear it, your response should be structured:

Ask specifically what has been applied for. Has the school applied for SLS? Is the child on the RTLB cluster's priority list? Has SHHNF been considered if there's a health component? If the answer to any of these is no, ask why not and request that it be actioned.

Ask what the IEP review process is. If the child's needs are documented in an IEP but the resources to meet those needs aren't in place, the school has a problem that can't simply be solved by telling you there's no money. Request an urgent IEP review meeting to revisit how goals will be achieved.

Document everything in writing. An email after every meeting confirming what was discussed and agreed creates a record that matters if you need to escalate to the Ministry or file a complaint.

If the school is not actioning reasonable funding referrals, you can contact the Ministry of Education's Learning Support team directly in your region and ask what funding streams exist for a student with your child's profile. The Ministry will generally point you back to the school, but the inquiry itself often prompts school-level movement.

The New Zealand system is under serious pressure — demand for specialist services grew 26% between 2017/18 and the 2024/25 reporting period, and by late 2025, more than 5,000 children were waiting for specialist support. Knowing which funding levers exist, and asking the right questions to make the school pull them, is the core of practical advocacy right now.

If you're navigating learning support funding applications, RTLB referrals, and IEP negotiations and aren't sure what to say or document, the NZ Special Education Advocacy Toolkit includes letter templates and a step-by-step escalation guide built around New Zealand law and the current funding structure.

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