Labour would abolish charter school model again - Hipkins

Thursday, 16 May 2024

Labour leader Chris Hipkins is promising to again abolish the charter school model if his party returns to power.

“What we did last time was we dealt with any existing charter schools on a case by case basis,” he said.

“In the end, all of those schools ended up coming into the public education system. But as we did last time, we will deal with each school on a case by case basis.”

Hipkins was in Christchurch on Wednesday, lunching with pupils at Te Kura O Matarangi Northcote School and local MPs.

Hipkins told the AM Show on Wednesday it was “too soon to say what we would do next time around because we don't yet know what the contracts are going to be, we don't yet know what the structure is going to be - but we do believe that schools should be part of the public education system”.

He then tweeted: “Charter schools are an ideological experiment that isn’t supported by evidence.

“Labour has abolished the charter school model before and we will do it again.”

Earlier this week, Associate Education Minister David Seymour announced the Government was putting $153 million in funding over four years to open 15 new charter schools and convert 35 state schools into charter schools.

The $153m will cover the start-up costs for new schools, funding for institutional costs like the Authorisation Board, and a basic level of operational funding (mainly for the new schools), Seymour said.

Charter schools have previously been bulk funded, and during 2014 and 2018 the cost per charter school student was around $48,000 of government funding compared to $9000 for public school students, education unions learned under the OIA.

Seymour has promised the new charter schools will be funded at the same rate as state schools.

“When state schools convert to charter schools, or when students transfer from state schools to charter schools, there will be baseline funding that effectively ‘follows the school’ or ‘follows the student’,” Seymour said.

Earlier in the week, Seymour said the first charter contracts “will be negotiated and signed before the end of the year so the first schools can open for term one 2025”.

On which state schools could become charter schools, Seymour said on Tuesday the most obvious group was former charter schools.

“The basic feedback I got is that when they were charter schools, they felt they had more autonomy and flexibility, less bureaucracy, and they could stay more focused on their underlying mission,” Seymour said.

“It's likely that quite a few of the former charter schools which are currently special character schools, which is a type of state school, will be keen to return to charter status.”

He said the other type may be state schools which are confident they would meet the contractor targets for attendance and achievement and want to run their own affairs.

On how it could work when state schools moved over to charter schools, Seymour said the number one principle behind conversion was all pre-existing rights are carried over.

“But once you've done that, then you can choose to do things differently.”

He added: “If you are a teacher at the school, you have a right to be no worse off in your employment arrangement.”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon delivered his pre-Budget speech on Wednesday, saying there would be “no bells, no whistles”.

Education was one area that would receive investment, he said, on top of $429m in savings found in the education budget. Already the Government has announced it will spend $67m for teaching structured literacy in schools, and $153m on charter schools.

For 2025 and 2026, students in years 0 to six will keep getting school lunches as they are now, while students from year seven to 13 will be fed under an alternative model. The scheme will be redesigned in its entirety in the meantime, with input from an advisory group.