Pitched as a market solution to a failing system — ACT's education agenda centres on competition, parental choice and performance incentives, with charter schools as its flagship tool.

The Policy: ACT Education Policy — September 2023 →

What it does

• Reinstates partnership (charter) schools as independently operated, publicly funded institutions with autonomy over curriculum, staffing, pay rates, hours and terms. Any community group or school board can apply. The government allocated $153 million over four years to establish up to 15 new charter schools and convert 35 existing state schools, targeting 50 total by 2026. Legislation passed Parliament on 25 September 2024.
• Introduces Student Education Accounts (SEAs) — ACT's long-term vision is a publicly funded account for every child that parents can spend at any registered school or provider, public or private, from early childhood through tertiary. Schools compete for enrolment rather than receiving block funding by default.
• Creates a $250 million annual Teaching Excellence Reward Fund (TERF) — administered by school principals to reward and recruit high-performing teachers over and above collective-agreement pay. Schools receive roughly $5,000 per full-time teacher for principals to distribute at their discretion.
• Allows secondary schools to opt out of NCEA and instead offer internationally recognised qualifications (Cambridge or International Baccalaureate) using redirected government subsidies, putting them on a level footing with private schools already offering these programmes.
• Removes the statutory obligation for school boards to "give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi" in curriculum planning, making te reo Māori and tikanga voluntary rather than mandated elements of school programmes.
• Cuts the Ministry of Education bureaucracy by 50%, targeting a saving of $240 million per year and devolving operational decisions to schools.
• Supports structured literacy and numeracy as the curriculum bedrock — ending open-plan classroom experiments and backing the government's curriculum reset to prioritise measurable academic foundations.

The result

Eight charter schools opened in February and July 2025. Early results are mixed but the government presents them favourably: five of the seven original schools exceeded their attendance and achievement targets in their first year. Tipene, a Māori/Pasifika boarding school for boys in Bombay, South Auckland, recorded 81% of students achieving at or above the expected level in maths, 79% in reading and 80% in writing by year end. BUSY School NZ improved attendance from 19% pre-enrolment to 83%. The École Française Internationale Auckland surpassed its government targets in both attendance and achievement.

Supporters, including Associate Education Minister David Seymour, argue the model reaches students who had been failed by the state system — particularly highly disengaged young people for whom standard schooling had not worked. Nathan Durie, Co-Tumuaki at Tipene, credits the boarding design that eliminates transport barriers: "It's more about the determination of a school to achieve something."

Critics offer a structural challenge rather than a dispute about individual school results. PPTA President Chris Abercrombie notes that attendance thresholds for charter schools can be as low as 60%, compared to 80% for state schools: "There's a lot of flexibility for these schools that [the Associate Education Minister] doesn't want to give to state schools." NZEI President Mark Potter argues the $153 million "could fully fund over 700 full-time teacher aides" and called charter schools "an old idea that failed last time around." Labour spokesperson Jan Tinetti characterised the policy as "driven by ideology rather than evidence."

The 2012–2018 charter school era (under Key/English) provides the most direct NZ evidence. An independent evaluation found "positive" family experiences and some staffing innovation, but — critically — insufficient data to determine whether student achievement improved. Senior Lecturer Jude MacArthur (University of Auckland) notes: "We know nothing about the achievement of students who received learning support" — the very group charter schools were designed to serve. Per-student costs in that era reached up to $48,421 per year compared to roughly $8,000 in state schools.

International evidence on charter-school equivalents is genuinely mixed. A 2023 Stanford CREDO study found positive learning outcomes overall, especially for lower-income students. However, US voucher programmes show a different picture: a 2018 study found disadvantaged students who received vouchers had *worse* outcomes than those who did not, and two-thirds of Iowa voucher recipients in 2023–24 were already in private schools — meaning public money subsidised existing private enrolments rather than expanding real choice.

Teaching Council CEO Lesley Hoskin raised a professional safety concern: charter schools can employ unregistered teachers, which the Council regards as a gap in child-protection safeguards.

The impacts to watch

• Who actually gets to choose? School choice is meaningful only when families have transport access and awareness of options. Rural and low-income families face structural barriers that affluent urban families do not. If SEAs are ever implemented, the question becomes whether the choice is real or theoretical for most families.
• Funding competition with state schools. The $153m charter school budget arrives while state schools are managing shortfalls in teaching aides and support staff. If charter rolls grow, per-pupil state funding follows the student, compressing state school budgets at the margin.
• The accountability gap. Charter schools are exempt from the Official Information Act and — by design — operate outside standard ERO review cycles. Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier has flagged concern about this transparency gap. Without comparable reporting, it will be difficult to assess whether the 2025 results hold over time.
• Labour market effects in teaching. A $250m TERF administered at principal discretion could embed pay disparities within schools and widen the gap between well-resourced schools that attract top teachers and lower-decile schools that cannot compete. Perry Rush, a prominent Auckland principal, argued performance pay "won't make a difference to teaching standards."
• Curriculum and identity in schools. Removing the Te Tiriti obligation from board governance may reduce te reo Māori and tikanga exposure in some schools, particularly lower-decile schools serving Māori communities who rely on state schools to provide cultural connection that privately-resourced families can access elsewhere.
• The 50-school target. Of 78 charter applications received by August 2024, 68 were from prospective new institutions and 10 from state schools seeking conversion. Whether all 50 schools open by 2026 — and whether the second wave performs as well as the first — will be a critical test of the model's scalability.

Our suggestion: follow the student, not the school

The evidence on school choice consistently shows that the quality of any given school — charter or state — matters far more than the ownership model. New Zealand's own 2014–2018 evidence base is too thin to support confident conclusions either way, but the international record suggests the gains tend to be modest, unevenly distributed, and most visible in schools that serve specific communities with strong mission alignment (as Tipene's boarding design illustrates). The real test is not whether individual charter schools can succeed — some clearly can — but whether the system-level effect is positive: do state schools lift their game, or do they lose resources and motivated families? Readers worth watching: the ERO-equivalent reviews of charter schools due from 2026 onward, and whether the SEA proposal ever moves from aspiration to legislation.