1. Oped for The Australian
February 2014 will mark the start of a quiet revolution in the delivery of public education in New
Zealand. Term one next year will see the opening of a small number of charter-type schools, called
Partnership Schools or Kura Hourua, named for the versatile ocean-going double-hulled canoes built
by New Zealand’s Maori ancestors for the challenges of long Pacific voyages.
Released from many of the major constraints around regular state schools, the schools have one
central requirement: they must attract and enable educational success for students underserved by
the country’s school system, notably Maori and Pasifika.
Unlike Australia, where 35 percent of students attend state-subsidised private schools, New
Zealand’s education system is heavily dominated by direct state provision: currently 96 percent of
New Zealand students attend state or state-integrated schools. While there is some flexibility and
devolution of management, and provision for special character and Maori language immersion
schools, it is largely a tightly regulated, one-size-fits-all approach. By international standards it rates
well, with New Zealand ranking fourth among 34 OECD countries for educational performance.
A look inside the statistics tells a different story, however. While New Zealand tops the OECD in
total public spending on education, and its European students rank first in the world, Maori students
come in at 28th
. Around 30 percent of all students, including half of Maori and 40 percent of Pasifika
leave school without the basic secondary school qualification needed to go on into any kind of
further training or meaningful employment pathway.
Partnership Schools seek to address this ‘long tail’ of underachievement through a model where the
state contracts with a community or private sector organisation to give parents more choice and to
drive innovation in ways that effectively engage struggling and at-risk students in learning. The
model draws on the essential features of the best charter schools internationally, and has two
distinctive characteristics: freedom and accountability.
The schools will be funded on a cashed-up per child basis, and have independence with respect to
school organisation, pedagogy, teacher remuneration, curriculum (so long as it can be mapped
against the New Zealand Curriculum), allocation of resources, etc. They may be run by a not-for-
profit or a for-profit organisation. They open, expand, contract and close according to demand. They
will be schools of choice: no child will be forced to enrol at one, and no teacher will be forced to
teach there.
At the heart of the model is a binding, legally enforceable contract with the Crown that sets specific,
measurable performance goals. These will include: academic and value-added achievement against
nationally recognised tests and qualifications; student engagement indicators such as attendance
and retention; family and community engagement; and financial and organisational performance.
Failure to perform will result in a short path to closure.
A rigorous authorisation process is designed to ensure that only high quality, high capability
proposals will be approved. The first authorisation round, currently nearing completion, attracted
35 proposals from around the country.

2. The framework of the model and the commitment to pilot it within the current three-year
Parliamentary term was the central feature of the governing National Party’s 2011 confidence and
supply agreement with the ACT Party, a minor classical liberal party with currently just one member
in the House.
Not surprisingly, development of the fledgling policy and its progress through Parliament has not
been without controversy. Most vociferous has been the opposition of New Zealand’s powerful
teacher unions, who see the initiative as undermining union control over teachers’ collective
agreements and a direct assault on the country’s state education system.
Interestingly, when Sweden moved some 20 years ago to introduce a form of charter school, now a
highly successful mainstream feature of its school network, their teacher unions did not oppose it.
Instead they saw it as an opportunity for teachers to gain professionally from more alternatives and
innovation in education. Subsequent surveys have shown this to be true, with significantly higher
teacher satisfaction rates for teachers in ‘free’ schools, compared with their regular state school
counterparts.
The most important factor countering opposition to the introduction of Partnership Schools has
been a clear demonstration of support for the initiative from the communities around the country
for whom it was designed.
The Iwi Education Authority, a leading voice of Maori education representing tribal Maori immersion
schools, gave it their “total and unequivocal support”.
Appearing before the Parliamentary Select Committee hearing submissions on the legislative
amendment, Iwi Education Authority Chair Dr Toby Curtis noted the “consistently poor status quo
results for Maori … with no respite in sight from an unresponsive and unempathetic mainstream
system. Kura Hourua [Partnership Schools] can be a circuit breaker with us, an agent of desperately
needed change.”
Details of the first group of Partnership Schools to be established will be announced shortly by
Minister of Education Hon Hekia Parata.
Catherine Isaac is chair of the Government-appointed Partnership Schools/Kura Hourua
Authorisation Board and chaired the Government working group that developed the policy.