It just received a deluge of opposing submissions, but Seymour’s plan to reintroduce charter schools looks unstoppable, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s extract from The Bulletin.
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Much of education community unites in opposition
The return of charter schools to New Zealand’s educational landscape took another step closer on Monday, when submissions closed on the education bill that will reintroduce the publicly-funded private schools. All but one of the submissions made to the education and workforce committee opposed the bill, notes The Post’s Hanna McCallum (paywalled). The submitters included teachers, principals and other educators, teachers unions and parents. “Their concerns included a lack of research – both nationally and internationally – to show charter schools resulted in overall better education outcomes, the limited ability for teachers to bargain collectively, the lack of transparency required as they would not be subject to OIA requests, the ability to make profit and the lack of requirement to give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi.” McCallum adds that a number of submitters “asked MPs if they would feel comfortable sending their children to an unregistered or unqualified doctor, pointing to the lack of requirement for charter schools to employ trained or registered teachers”.
What Seymour is planning
Charter schools were first introduced under the name “partnership schools” in 2014, the result of a National-Act coalition agreement signed in 2011. “By the time the Labour government ended the charter schools scheme in 2018, there were 12 charter schools in operation,” reports The Spinoff’s Shanti Mathias. At one point there were 23 around the country, mostly in Northland and Auckland, with many of them focused on Māori and Pasifika students.
In 2023, charter schools were again included in the National-Act coalition agreement. Associate education minister David Seymour, an enthusiastic charter school supporter, says the government plans to open 50 of the schools, around two-thirds of which would be converted state schools. He hopes to have the first charter schools up and running next year. Expressions of interest for potential school operators close on August 9 and while Seymour won’t reveal how many have been received, the application pack has been downloaded more than 140 times, McCallum reports.
Charter schools: the case for
Submissions on the new bill might have been overwhelmingly opposed, but charter schools have many fans. “Former students of charter schools have described their positive impact, and former charter school principals have praised the flexibility and lack of bureaucratic hurdles involved in running a charter school,” writes Mathias. In 2017, a year before the scheme was disestablished by Labour, then charter school principal Alwyn Poole wrote about what his school did differently: “We have 15 students per class and 60 per ‘Villa’ (mini-school within a school). We run a very hard-working academic morning and an effective arts and activities-based afternoon… We provide all uniforms, stationery and IT. We pay our staff salaries at least 5% above state levels, provide other benefits for them and pay them directly for the development of some resources.”
Announcing $153m in funding for the new version of the schools, Seymour said “the idea that there’s a no-holds-barred curriculum is not a fair assessment of what charter schools will be”. The schools will be required to teach a curriculum that is “as good or better than the New Zealand curriculum” and any school that doesn’t measure up will have their funding cut or be shut down, he said.
What the critics say
Opponents, meanwhile, argue that charter schools will do serious damage to the broader educational landscape, Mathias writes. “They say that if you’re worried about educational outcomes, funding for a small number of schools doesn’t lift standards or achievement across the board; even if charter schools succeed, the majority of students will still miss out. Instead, they say, it’s better to increase funding to all schools.”
Opposition parties are highly critical of the new scheme. “Funnelling millions into what is essentially a pet project for David Seymour, at a time when teachers are crying out for more resourcing for our public schools, is morally bankrupt and incredibly irresponsible,” said Green Party education spokesperson Lawrence Xu-Nan. Said Labour’s Jan Tinetti: “There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids.”
