Education Minister Chris Hipkins has received advice that Auckland schools expect to be able to use a teacher recruitment scheme next year but the funding was never allocated by the last Government.

Education Minister Chris Hipkins says he has an almost $38 million "funding hole" for dealing with a teacher shortage after the previous Government announced a scheme but didn't provide the cash.

The Voluntary Bonding Scheme (VBS), which was first introduced in 2009, provides financial incentives of up to $17,500 to graduate teachers to work in hard-to-staff schools.

In August, then-Education Minister Nikki Kaye announced the Ministry of Education would do a review of the VBS and expand it to include all Auckland state and state-integrated schools effective from the start of next year.

MURRAY WILSON/STUFF National's education spokeswoman Nikki Kaye says teacher supply was an issue when she was minister, which is why she had prioritised supply initiatives.

This was designed to try and reduce the teacher shortages in the country's biggest city after principals had reported they were getting almost no applications for advertised roles.

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Just this week, Auckland schools told parents they "have to accept" class sizes will go up as schools grapple with "absolutely dire" teacher shortages, according to principals.

Hipkins revealed this week that while the VBS expansion was announced and campaigned on by National in the lead-up to the election, no Cabinet approval was ever given.

This means the new funding needed – $37.5 million over four years – isn't available and can't be found within the Ministry baselines.

But Kaye, National's education spokeswoman, says it's not "uncommon" to "reprioritise from existing baselines".

"As I said at the time, the final detail of the initiative was yet to be confirmed. It was the Ministry of Education's view that the outcome of the final review and detailed policy would likely need to go through Cabinet."

The ministry has since advised Hipkins that Auckland principals are relying on being able to use the expanded VBS as a recruitment incentive next year and expect it to be available.

In the House during Question Time on Wednesday Hipkins said he couldn't commit to the VBS extension to help Auckland schools at this point because "there's a big funding hole where the money should have been appropriated by the previous government".

Hipkins said several schools were already advising "they're getting no applications for the jobs they're advertising".

When Kaye was minister, she received advice that teacher supply moved in cycles but says Cabinet were well aware of the current issues of supply, which is why initiatives like VBS had been made a priority.

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