Labour leader Chris Hipkins used the TVNZ leaders’ debate to restate his party’s commitment to abolishing charter schools if it wins. If he follows through, the sector will have been created, scrapped, recreated and scrapped again inside roughly 15 years. You can like or dislike the model. The commercial lesson is the same either way. A government contract in this country is only as durable as the polling.
Within hours of the debate, ACT leader David Seymour put out a release headlined “Hipkins puts unions ahead of thousands of students”. The political fight is predictable. What matters for business readers is what the policy does to anyone who signs a long-term deal with the Crown to deliver a public service differently.
Providers built on a 10-year promise
The current sector is no pilot. By mid-2026 the confirmed national total had reached 21 charter schools, eight of them kaupapa Māori, meaning more than a third of the sector will be iwi-led or Māori-focused once approved schools open. Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei opened a full-immersion kura this year, and Ngāti Toa plans to open Kura Toa in Porirua in 2027.
The Charter School Agency’s 2025 annual report showed enrolment had climbed to 427 students by September 2025, with total government funding of $153.090 million committed across the four years to 2027/28. In February 2026 the Ministry of Education noted the Budget 2024 package was designed to establish about 15 new schools and convert about 35 state schools.
Sponsors have put governance capacity, curriculum design, staff and facilities into contracts that run for a decade with renewal rights. On paper that is the kind of horizon that justifies investment. In practice the teachers’ union itself has spelled out the flaw. PPTA guidance for school boards points out that earlier charter contracts were cancelled after a change of government, and that any government can legislate its way out. A 10-year term means little if Parliament can void it in a single reading.
Double jeopardy for operators
Charter providers already carry more risk than state schools. Their funding is not guaranteed and can be withdrawn if attendance and achievement targets are missed. That is a defensible trade. You get flexibility over curriculum, hours and governance, and in return you are held to results.
What is harder to defend is stacking election risk on top of performance risk. A sponsor can hit every target and still lose the school because the government changed. That turns a results-based contract into a political bet, and political bets get priced accordingly, by fewer applicants, more cautious investment and shorter planning horizons.
The early evidence makes the trade-off sharper. A 1News report in May found Māori students at charter schools had a regular attendance rate of 65% in term four, against 43% at state schools. Results across the sector are mixed, and one year of data proves little. But scrapping a model before it has had time to prove or disprove itself is not evidence-based policy.
Labour has never wavered
No one can claim to be surprised. Back in 2024, then-education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said Labour had “got rid of these before, and we will get rid of them again”, signalling that 10-year terms would not stop it. In March 2025, Labour MP Ginny Andersen appeared to soften the line, suggesting working schools might not be “unearthed”, and the party promptly recommitted to full abolition.
Hipkins has said Labour would disestablish the Charter School Agency and point providers towards designated character or integrated school status under the Education and Training Act. That offers a landing pad of sorts, but one on the state’s terms, with the governance and staffing freedoms that define the model stripped back.
There is a second layer of uncertainty too. In 2024 the Council of Trade Unions filed an International Labour Organization complaint arguing the law restricts collective bargaining for charter staff. The workforce flexibility that underpins the model remains contested on two fronts.
The signal reaches beyond classrooms
This matters well beyond education. New Zealand needs alternative routes into trades, skills and work for young people the mainstream system is losing. Iwi, industry groups and training providers are exactly the operators who could build those routes, and they are watching how the Crown treats the ones who went first.
If the message is that a compliant, performing provider can be legislated out of existence every second election, the sensible response is to stay small, avoid capital commitments and keep one foot in the state system. That is the opposite of the innovation both sides of politics say they want.
The fix is not complicated. Any incoming government that wants to change the model should judge schools on results and honour contracts that are delivering. Labour has a few weeks to say whether it will. Until then, every sponsor in the sector is running a business with an expiry date set by voters, not by outcomes.
Sources
- Newsroom: What abolishing charter schools would look like under Labour (2026-10-18)
- Newsroom: Defying politics, iwi paddle their own waka to new charter schools (2026-07-02)
- Charter School Agency: Annual Report 2025 (2025-06-30)
- Ministry of Education: Charter schools information release (2026-02-26)
- PPTA: Charter Schools – Considerations for School Boards
- Charter Schools | Kura Hourua: Funding and resourcing
- 1News: Māori find value in highly politicised charter schools (2026-05-26)
- 1News: Labour vows to ‘get rid of’ charter schools if it regains power (2024-08-12)
- NZ Herald: Labour recommits to abolishing charter schools after Ginny Andersen comments criticised (2025-03-19)
- Newsroom: Unions seek international inquiry into charter schools policy (2024-11-05)
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