Charting success

In the second coming of charter schools, Act leader David Seymour plans a much bigger roll-out. But what evidence is there that they do any better than state schools?

- DANYL MCLAUCHLAN

It could happen very quickly. In 2011, Britain's newly elected Conservative government introduced 16 charter schools (they called them free schools) to the public education system. These were staunchly opposed by the teachers' unions and the Labour Party, which attacked them as inefficient and ideological. Today in the UK, there are 650 free schools that have enrolled more than 350,000 students, and more are in the pipeline.

In New Zealand, the re-establishment of charter schools was a major policy win for Act in the coalition agreement. Leader David Seymour holds an associate education portfolio and he's won $153 million in this year's Budget to establish 15 new charter schools and transition 35 state schools to the charter model. He aims to have the first contracts negotiated by the end of the year so the first charters can begin teaching in term one next year. Labour leader Chris Hipkins has pledged to re-abolish the charter school model when Labour returns to government.

Seymour has been here before. In 2014, he entered Parliament as Act's leader and sole MP, becoming parliamentary undersecretary to the Minister of Education with special responsibility for charter schools in John Key's National-led government. These had been established two years earlier in a coalition arrangement with Seymour's predecessor, John Banks. When the government changed in 2017, Hipkins as Education Minister quickly disestablished the charters, folding the 11 schools established under Act and National into the state system.

Teacher Nina Hood worked at Auckland's Epsom Girls and Mt Roskill Grammar Schools before completing a PhD at Oxford, studying educational theory. The researcher and Education Hub founder has forthright opinions about nearly every aspect of the New Zealand education system - except charter schools, about which she's deeply ambivalent. Hood served on the charter schools establishment board before standing down.