Charter schools will receive funding to the tune of $153 million, but one principal believes that won't go far enough.
Associate Education Minister David Seymour on Tuesday announced new charter schools will be established during 2025 and 2026. Thirty-five state schools will also change to follow the charter model.
However, Raewyn Tipene, the principal of Whangārei's Te Kāpehu Whetū - a former charter school - said $153 million for that number of institutions "doesn't sound like enough".
"We'll see how that's going to be used over the next little while," she told AM on Wednesday.
Nonetheless, Tipene claimed her students were happier and performed much better under the charter school model before it was scrapped by the Labour-led Government in 2018.
Tipene said she's keen to learn more about the Government's plan, given her school stood out academically when it was a charter.
"It actually took about two years to change back over [to the state system] and that's one of the issues that we'll have to address when we see the policy: is it worth going over [to charter] at this stage?
"But essentially, we were a high-performing school - we were in the top quartile of schools in the country and no.2 for UE (university entrance) in Northland at the time.
"Coming back across [to the state system], it's a very different regime; it's extremely controlled, it's highly bureaucratic and that's despite all the good people working in it, and it was just a tough, tough change."
Tipene said much consideration was needed as to whether the school would switch back to the charter system.
"We're just going to see how the policy rolls out and what it says we can and can't do."
She believed charter schools could work for any demographic across New Zealand.
"It certainly worked for us, we're young Māori and we were able to bring what we thought was important for our whānau and our kids and make a difference," she said.
Principals Tipene's spoke with were struggling under the mainstream model, she added.
While the Primary Teachers' Union has slammed the Government's charter school announcement and called it a "misuse of money", Seymour believed unions only dismiss charter schools because they're a threat to their model.
