Up to 50 charter schools will get a cash injection in the 2024 Budget in a move David Seymour says will help lift declining educational performance.
It's made up of $153 million in new funding over four years to establish and operate up to 15 new charter schools and convert 35 state schools to charter schools in 2025 and 2026 depending on demand and suitability.
Charter schools — which are not run by the government and do not need to teach the state-set curriculum — were allowed due to a confidence and supply agreement between ACT and National after the 2011 election. They were abolished by the previous Labour government.
In making the announcement today, Associate Education Minister David Seymour said charter schools provided educators with greater autonomy and created diversity in New Zealand's education system, as well as freeing educators from "state and union interference".
He said they also raised overall educational achievement, especially for students who were underachieving or disengaged from the current system.
Legislation would be introduced to Parliament in the coming months, and when it was, an application process would open. Once the new law passed, the first charter contracts will be negotiated and signed before the end of the year, Seymour said.
That would mean the first charter schools could open in term one 2025.
A new departmental agency will also be created to establish, implement, operate and monitor the performance of charter schools.
Seymour said there had already been "overwhelming interest" from educators exploring the charter model, even before official applications had opened.
"We've heard from potential applicants such as TIPENE St Stephen's Māori Boy's Boarding School, and AGE School.
“By focusing primarily on student achievement, charter schools allow sponsors and communities to take their own path getting there," he said.
"They can, with some restrictions, set their own curriculum, hours and days of operation, and governance structure. They also have greater flexibility in how they spend their funding as long as they reach the agreed performance outcomes.
"To provide certainty to sponsors, they will have a fixed-term contract of 10 years to operate a charter school, with two rights of renewal for 10 years each. All fixed-term periods are conditional on the school continuing to meet the terms of its contract."
Seymour said a pilot run by the John Key-led National government had played a role in informing the revised charter school model.
He said charter schools were subject to "high levels of monitoring and accountability" and could be shut down when they did not achieve the outcomes they were funded to achieve — an accountability he said state schools did not have.
"In the United Kingdom, 40 per cent of primary schools and 80 per cent of secondary schools are academies (charter schools), and in the United States around 25 per cent of schools are charter schools.
"A 2023 study by the Centre for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University in the United States found charter schools produced positive learning outcomes for students when compared to public schools, and that students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds experience greater outcomes."
The new departmental agency established to oversee charter schools was aimed at providing them with independence from the Ministry of Education while also reflecting they were Crown funded and monitored, Seymour said.
"Charter schools will largely be funded on a 'per student' basis, and funding will be broadly equivalent to that for State schools with similar rolls and characteristics."
He said unions would criticise charter schools because unions stood to lose membership fees and "their grip on the sector".
"I say to them it's time they put the students at the heart of education."
'Destructive, weird'
Previous criticisms of charter schools were around untrained educators potentially teaching children and a lack of accountability through the Official Information Act (OIA) — charter schools were not subject to the OIA.
The New Zealand Education Institute is still against charter schools, with its president Mark Potter telling the NZ Herald last year that reviving them was a "destructive, weird, radical" move.
"What we don't want to see is more attempts to privatise education. We want to see public education across the board funded and supported properly. To have partnership schools undermines that very idea," he said.
Potter said the existing education system allowed for difference in the way schools operated.
SHARE ME