PPTA Urges Parties To Tackle ‘Cost Of Learning’ Crisis Following Inflation SpikeNews today that inflation has spiked to over four percent highlights the financial pain that schools and kura across the country are suffering, says Chris Abercrombie, president of PPTA Te Wehengarua, the union for secondary school teachers and principals. “We have already called out the current Government’s 2% adjustment as shockingly inadequate given Treasury’s inflation forecast of 3.2% for the year. “It’s now clear that inflation will exceed that forecast - the Government must not just sit on its hands while students’ education suffers. There needs to be an urgent recalculation of the school ‘operational grant’ to fully meet a revised inflation forecast for the 2026 calendar year. Even before the 2027 adjustment was announced, PPTA Te Wehengarua had released analysis (https://ppta.org.nz/news-and-media/schools-operational-funding-nearly-12-below-inflation) that showed that successive Government had let school funding fall nearly 12% below inflation.