The Government has allocated more than $150 million to re-introduce charter schools into the education system. 

Associate Education Minister David Seymour said May’s Budget would include $153 million in funding across four years to establish up to 50 charter schools. Fifteen schools would be new while 35 would be converted state schools. 

Charter schools operated in New Zealand between 2011 and 2018. They were a long-standing Act Party policy and operated in NZ between 2011 and 2017 when Act was a support party for the National Government. 

They were abolished in 2018 under the Education Amendment Act by the previous Labour Coalition government. 

Charter schools that were operating could transition into character schools which are entirely government-funded for years 0-13 and teach the national curriculum that aligns with their “character” such as an iwi or educational philosophy. 

Once the legislation passes, contracts will be negotiated and signed. The first of the charter schools will open from as early as term 1 next year. 

“Sponsors” would have fixed-term ten-year contracts to operate a charter school with two rights of renewal for 10 years each, Seymour said. All fixed-term periods were conditional on the school continuing to meet the terms of its contract. 

“The pilot run by the previous government that ACT was part of is informing the revised charter school model,” Seymour said. 

“Notably, 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.” 

Seymour said charter schools gave educators greater autonomy, created diversity in the country’s education system and raised the overall educational achievement, especially for students who are underachieving or disengaged from the current system. 

State schools are entirely funded by the government and teach the national curriculum. A state-integrated school teaches is partly Government-funded and teaches the national curriculum based on specific principles, such as a religion or philosophy. 

Meanwhile, a charter school is Government-funded and can set its own curriculum, hours and days of operation. Seymour said they have greater flexibility in how they spend their funding so long as they reach agreed performance outcomes. 

Today’s announcement is the latest in a suite of new policies for the education sector, including cutting down spending in the school lunches programme and introducing new attendance action plan that includes new daily data reporting on regional attendance rates. 

There could be state schools that are not performing that are turned into charter schools, he said. 

For the 15 new charter schools, the funding had been budgeted for around 200 students on the roll per school. 

Funding for charter schools would be similar to that of state schools. 

He said the previous charter model (that ran between 2011 and 2017) was overwhelmingly successful.