An education trust relying largely on donations from the wealthy to support 120 schools is looking to raise $16m over the next five years to support struggling learners.
The Manaiakalani Education Trust supports 120 of New Zealand's poorest schools, where kids start two years behind academically.
Point England school principal Russell Burt, who co-founded the programme, said that the school was initially behind in achievement, but that the programme helped it to accelerate learning.
"We needed to go fast, our kids needed to do a year-and-a-half in a year and they needed to do it three years in a row to really embed that performance improvement."
Focused on teacher development and digital learning, the programme focuses on children and their whānau in communities in low-decile school areas.
To help fund it, children give presentations to wealthy New Zealanders, with the aim of getting people and organisations like the NEXT Foundation to donate to the cause.
The foundation's chief executive, Bill Kermode, said that the presentations were a "fantastic sell" and that in a perfect world the Government would be fully funding these activities.
"There is a role for independent funding in something like education of our most disadvantage communities. The Government should be the primary funder by a long way."
The NEXT Foundation has donated about $10m to the cause over nine years, Kermode said.
Manaiakalani Education Trust chairman Pat Snedden said that the presentations help to build confidence in the marketplace that "these people know what they're doing, these are people worth trusting".
"You need to break the sense in the public that this is a big dark hole that nothing can be done about, we absolutely do not believe that.
"We've got a model that's got evidence associated with it, we've got innovative thinking in the way its delivering… and in the end we look for the best possible outcome we can."
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