Act leader David Seymour will oversee the revival of charter schools as Associate Education Minister. Photo / Marty Melville
Act leader David Seymour is planning changes under the revival and expansion of charter schools this term with more attention given to their funding, student assessment and, more radically, allowing state schools to convert.
But opposition to the schools, known in New Zealand as partnership schools, is likely to be intense when proposals come before Parliament.
Seymour wants the reintroduction of partnership schools to be quicker and bigger this time around.
It should be faster because the work on legislation, contracting and administrative bodies had already been done previously.
He cited three categories: former partnership schools that wanted to revert – and he believed most would; newly proposed partnership schools; and state schools wanting to convert.
While there had been only 1500 students previously enrolled at 11 schools, he expected an expansion this time.
“You could imagine a scenario in which a state school larger than that could convert overnight,” he said in an interview with the Herald.
“I envisage the funding formula will be designed to encourage growth rather than what we had before, so the way to become viable economically will be to grow and attract students.”
Act introduced partnership schools in 2014 during the John Key-led government and Seymour became an undersecretary to Education Minister Hekia Parata.
Now as Associate Education Minister, he will be primarily responsible for the reintroduction of charter schools.
They were privately run free schools, primary and secondary, contracted and funded by the state to improve the outcomes of highly challenged students, and had greater flexibility over teaching and teachers. Under Labour, they became special character state schools.
So who will decide whether a state school will convert to a partnership school under the new Coalition Government agreement between Act and National?
Seymour said the process was yet to be designed but he envisaged it being a decision by the board of trustees in consultation with the school community and the agreement of the Government.
Asked if parents would continue to have a choice about whether their child could attend a charter school, he said that would depend, to some extent, on the location.
“You could look at it another way. If the parents were overwhelmingly unhappy with the state school as it stood and wanted to convert and change up the way it operated, should they be forced to retain the status quo?
“There are many state schools which, I suspect, would be very happy to move to a model where they received their money in return for reaching performance targets, and are given much greater autonomy and much less interference from the state.”
He said all schools were going to have to serve their communities.
“The question is just whether their relationship with the Crown is through a contract for outcomes or a much more complex relationship through the Ministry of Education.”
Regarding funding, he said a mistake had been made with the previous formula, which included first, an establishment grant, and then, operational funding based on a guaranteed minimum roll. That meant that a school would be paid for 50 students even if it only had 20.
“If anything, the incentive was to get down to 10 because the funding per student would be even greater.”
He wanted to come up with a new funding model where funding would follow the child.
“It is actually a challenging financial exercise but I feel we can do better this time.”
Seymour said he also wanted to change the way students in partnership schools were assessed.
While the previous partnership schools had been monitored, there had never been a progression-based assessment that would have measured whether their progress was better than they would otherwise have made in the state system. That could have been done using Integrated Data Infrastructure.
Anecdotally, they were better off.
“There is just no question about that. The fact they were attending school was a game-changer for many of them. However, we’ll never have open and shut data on that question.”
He said that in the perfect world, the policy work and legislation would be completed to have the first group of partnership schools open in the first term of 2024, but it wasn’t clear whether that deadline could be met.
But he expected strong opposition from teacher unions.
“The unions will always resist for the simple reason that partnership schools are deemed to be outside the state sector and therefore not bound by collective agreements between the unions and the Crown,” said Seymour.
“It is an existential threat for them because partnership schools have individual employment agreements and in many cases were successful because they were able to rapidly remove under-performing teachers.”
Post Primary Teachers’ Association president Chris Abercrombie said the big question about charter schools was why they were needed at all.
“What problem are they trying to solve? That has never been really articulated to us.”
There was a large variety of schools already in the New Zealand system which, compared to other countries, was already highly devolved.
“We’ve got huge flexibility that already exists within the system. We’ve got state, we’ve got state-integrated, we’ve got special character, we’ve got religious… we’ve got alternative education, we’ve got private schools, we’ve got single-sex, co-ed, we’ve got small, large, urban, rural. There’s so many choices in our education system at the moment.”
Previous charter schools that had become special character schools could do what they did before except hire unregistered teachers and ignore the New Zealand curriculum.
He said there was a lot of uncertainty about the return of charter schools,
and “101 questions” about what would happen if an existing state school converted.
If it had to close as a state school, that would trigger the redundancy clause in the collective agreement and a school with, say, 100 staff could face millions of dollars in redundancy payments.
Abercrombie said the focus should be on public education through which the vast majority of students received their education.
“Building up our public school system, funding it properly, having qualified registered teachers in front of every young person and having subject specialists, that should be our focus, not getting public money to private individuals to run schools as they see fit.”
What is a charter school?
Under repealed laws setting up charter schools – also known as partnership schools, or koura hourua – sponsors of each school were contracted by the Government through fixed-term contracts to meet agreed specified performance outcomes in return for bulk funding and flexibility over how the schools were run.
The school had the freedom to choose the curriculum, who should teach, pay and conditions of staff, hours of operation, and governance model. They could be non-profit or for-profit, faith-based or secular.
They were required to have at least 75 per cent of their students in a “priority” category: Māori or Pacific, students with special education needs, and/or students from low socio-economic backgrounds. They could not charge fees.
They were introduced in 2014 by Act and by 2018 there were 11 partnership schools with 1440 enrolled students. Labour abolished charter schools under the law and they became “special character” state schools and are still operating.
Expectations tempered around return to surplus in 2027/28.