A leaked report to RNZ showed the future of the $130m-a-year Kahui Ako programme was in doubt.
In the report, Minister of Education Erica Stanford said the funding would be reallocated to support children with disabilities.
Last week three Otago principals said the scheme had been hugely beneficial to the schools involved.
But St Clair School principal Jen Rogers said the writing had been on the wall that the scheme needed to be reviewed. There was limited funding in the education sector and a desperate need for more learning support co-ordinators.
She believed educators could cope with losing the Kāhui Ako programme.
"There’s no rigorous data showing that that amount of money is having a positive impact on learning across the country."
Ms Rogers said reviews of the scheme did not compare schools in the scheme with schools that were not in it.
"My school, which has not been part of a Kāhui Ako, has also had some really significant impacts for our learners without needing thousands and thousands of dollars being paid to staff to achieve that.
"I get a bit frustrated when I hear people saying, ‘yes, but it enables us to collaborate’. We’ve always been able to collaborate. That’s never, ever, been a barrier."
Ms Rogers said learners who were in a Kāhui Ako were not significantly better off than those at centres that were not a part of the programme.
"I really don’t believe we need it and certainly not at the expense of children with learning needs. I’ve got children with autism who get no funding to support their autism, nothing."
She would rather have more learning support co-ordinators to support children with extra needs than the release time for teachers that the Kāhui Ako scheme allowed for.
The co-ordinators were the conduit between school staff and external agencies including the ministry, speech therapists and public health nurses and they built relationships with the school’s most vulnerable families.
Learning support co-ordinators made a much more direct positive impact for students than the Kāhui Ako scheme did, she said.
"I would have to say that this is the one initiative in education that has actually made a positive difference for me as a principal."
Two-thirds of schools do not have access to support co-ordinators, with only one allocated to a cluster of about 500 learners.
Otago Primary Principals’ Association chairwoman Kim Blackwood said even though the programme was not impacting children directly on a day-to-day basis, it was having a flow-on effect because it helped upskill teachers.
For some it provided opportunities they would not have otherwise had.
Ms Blackwood said the government needed to budget to make equitable outcomes for all.
"Learning support has been underfunded by the government forever and it is costing schools massive amounts of money that they’re having to fund themselves."
She said the leaked report highlighted the inequities for funding available in the sector.
"The reality is, unfortunately we seem to be in a position where the government is always saying you can have this but you can’t have that instead of seeing that actually they are both a priority."
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