ACT wants 10,000 charter school students by 2029. Labour would move the schools into the state system

ACT has set a target of 10,000 charter school enrolments by 2029 and wants a charter school option in every major town, RNZ reported. ACT leader David Seymour announced the plan in Henderson, West Auckland. He said ACT would push for more suitable state and state-integrated schools to convert to charter schools. It would also encourage new charter schools where there's enough demand and a sponsor willing to run one.

Labour has again promised to abolish the model. Seymour challenged Labour leader Chris Hipkins to visit a charter school and tell the students himself why he wants to "take away" their education, RNZ reported.

The starting number depends on who you ask. Newstalk ZB put the current 20 charter schools at about 2,000 students. Newsroom reports 21 confirmed charter schools plus one converted state school, and 1,732 students as of July. ACT's target is five times Newstalk ZB's figure, or nearly six times Newsroom's.

Seymour told Hosking that each application round draws 60 or 70 applicants who have prepared submissions and have their community on board. "This is an idea whose time has come," he said.

He also told RNZ that early results were encouraging. In his account, most charter schools are meeting their attendance and achievement targets, and every charter school teaching Years 3 to 10 has met its maths achievement threshold. The figures are Seymour's own, and none of the sources checks them independently.

"There is no one type of charter school for one type of student, and that is the point," Seymour said. He listed schools for high-performance athletes and for students with autism, one built around Pacific culture, one teaching the International Baccalaureate in French, an online school and one belonging to an Australian chain.

What Labour would do

"It doesn't mean the charter schools that exist will all disappear under Labour, what it means is they will transition into the public education system," Hipkins told the NZ Herald. He said each school would be dealt with case by case.

Labour has done this before. Charter schools, then called partnership schools, ran from 2014 to 2018, when Labour ended all 17 that were operating. Twelve became state-integrated schools, according to Newsroom.

Labour education spokesperson Ginny Andersen pointed to special character schools as the likely home this time. "I've not seen anything that a charter school is doing that could not be provided in the framework of a school of special character," she told Newsroom.

Andersen said she had talked to current charter schools about the transition. But she admitted she had not spoken to any iwi-led schools, Newsroom reported, even though more than a third of charter schools are kaupapa Māori.

Helmut Modlik, chief executive of Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira, told Newsroom that Ngāti Toa expects Kura Toa, due to open in Porirua next year, to keep its model whoever governs, perhaps with "a reframe, a rebrand".

Pakaraka School in Northland became the first state school to convert to a charter school, RNZ reported on 12 October. It is now run by the Society of Holistic Learners, a charitable trust led by the school's parents. Principal Patricia Simeon told Newsroom the school plans to become a Steiner school. If Labour wins, she hopes it could do that as a special character school.

Pushback and the other parties

NZ Principals' Federation president Jason Miles told Newsroom that charter schools teach 1,732 students, compared with 732,787 in state schools, or 0.2 percent. He said the money should go to state schools instead, to pay for lunches, educational psychologists and teacher aides.

Newsroom also asked the other parties where they stand:

• National: Education Minister Erica Stanford declined Newsroom's interview request. A statement said: "The National Party remains committed to ensuring charter schools continue to provide choice in education."
• NZ First supports the intent and principle of charter schools, as long as they are funded at the same level as other state schools.
• Opportunity would pause further expansion, fund existing charter schools at the same per-student rate as state schools and run a transparent study of their results.
• The Greens would move charter schools back into the mainstream system, education spokesperson Lawrence Xu-Nan said. That could happen by widening the scope of special character schools or through a proposed independent Māori education authority. The party is concerned about privatisation, contracts covering several schools and charter schools' exemption from the Official Information Act.
• Te Pāti Māori did not respond to Newsroom.

Rakesh Naidoo, a former police superintendent ranked 13th on Labour's list, sits on the board of the New Zealand Performance Academy, a charter school for athletes that opened early this year, the Herald reported. Hipkins said he hadn't known. He said Naidoo would "certainly" need to stand down from the board if he became an MP.