The Accelerating Learner Success Fund (Tūwhitia) has up to $5 million available for the 2023/24 financial year, and up to $10 million in each subsequent year to support the acceleration of existing learner success initiatives. 

How much can be applied for?

There are no minimum or maximum caps on the value of your applications within the $5 million that is available for the 2023/24 financial year, or the $10 million in subsequent financial years. However, we expect that the Fund will support a number of initiatives.

Proposals can be across multiple years. 

Please note that we may seek to only partially fund an initiative. If this happens, we will contact you to discuss what this may look like. Alternatively, we may engage with you if we consider that an initiative is particularly promising and could warrant additional funding.

Co-investment is required

To receive funding TEOs must co-invest in the learner success initiatives. 

What can the funding be used for?

When developing the budget for your proposal, please note that the use of funding could include such things as:

• personnel costs
• purchase of software required, or
• resource development and publishing costs.

You cannot use funding for:

• any purpose other than the stated initiative (it must be ring-fenced within your accounts), or
• subsidising or addressing business-as-usual delivery.

There will be multiple application rounds

Expressions of interest for the first application round were open from 25 January to 14 February 2024.

Expressions of interest are assessed against the assessment criteria. Expressions of interest that most closely align to the assessment criteria and target investment for the greatest gains for underserved learners will then be invited to submit a full application.

We expect to run a second round of applications in the second half of 2024 and further rounds in future years.

TEOs will be required to share information

TEOs that receive funding under this Fund will be required to publish and share information about their initiatives. This may include progress updates and outputs that could be implemented and scaled up in other TEOs.

Agreement between TEOs and the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) on information sharing will be included in the full application form and confirmed through contract negotiations for successful applicants.