r/newzealand • u/Pissyouagadougou • 15h ago
Other Two former charter schools under microscope for growing debt, illegal board appointments
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/education/1292030/two-former-charter-schools-under-microscope-for-growing-debt-illegal-board-appointments•
u/jobbybob Part time Moehau 14h ago
And yet we are persisting with Charter Schools Mk2 under the currently ACT-National agreements.
Charter schools have been a failure elsewhere in the world yet somehow we are having a second go at it..
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u/Kokophelli 14h ago
"just because the rest of the world thinks something means its the opposite here. We are special". /s
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u/HeinigerNZ 12h ago
These outfits have been state schools for nearly three times as long as they followed the initial Charter school model.
If they're failing now then just perhaps maybe it's not that initial model.
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u/Klein_Arnoster 14h ago
If you read the article, all the problems in the schools started when they were forced to become state schools by Labour.
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u/JeffMcClintock 14h ago
I think the fraud started earlier. Paying themselves (under a different name) to run their own school for profit while keeping the school technically "not for profit".
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u/Russell_W_H 13h ago
You made me read the whole article.
Just to call out your bullshit.
Do you mean that before they had to follow rules they didn't break them? That's bullshit. They had problems, they just weren't breaking rules, because they didn't have them.
Charter schools have never worked (to educate children). They are a way to funnel money to big business, while not educating children.
Anyone still advocating for them is uninformed or unintelligent or corrupt. And those are inclusive 'or's.
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u/KAYO789 14h ago
So shock horror, when presented with a budget that all state schools have to live within, they simply couldn't? Somehow that's Labour's fault in your eyes?
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u/sauve_donkey 13h ago
That's the conclusion you come to?
Charter schools were never a low-cost solution, but they filled a niche that state schools didn't, albeit at a higher cost per student, often students that state schools failed. So yeah making those students try to fit into a state schol budget was unlikely to lead to a better educational outcome for them. But their loss is acceptable collateral to be able to flip the bird to Seymour?
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u/TantalisingTiramisu 12h ago
Thats the conclusion you've come to?
So what they needed to swap their board with religious zealots because the state schools failed them? You'd have to assume from that the failing was of the state to accept religious indoctrination.
Knowing that it was a failed experiment prior to its existence doesn't make those harmed by it collateral in flipping the bird to Seymour, it makes them victims of Seymour's bullshit pushing of pre failed systems.
Their loss is unacceptable, that's why everyone has always said it's bullshit. The obvious outcome occurring isn't some new occurrence when it was always known to be the end goal of the system.
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u/throwaway384983547w 15h ago edited 14h ago
They were not under oversight or subject to the same rules as a state school- nobody knows if they were fine in the first place- but they were using government funding. That is the problem with charter schools in the US as they are schools for profit.
And in NZ they are mostly funded by redirecting tax dollars out of our state schools. Once they couldn't do that as easily, the problems arose.
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u/OldKiwiGirl 13h ago
"They were not under oversight or subject to the same rules as a state school"
They aren't now.
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u/davetenhave 14h ago
the charter school grift just comes apart so fast...
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u/redmermaid1010 Mr Four Square 14h ago
Read this article and a couple of points i could see.
They pay management and licensing fees for material that the MoE thinks shouldn't be paid. Going back through the trail of companies associated with this fee it eventually lands at Crimson education. A right wing organisation associated with John Key.
The 2nd point is the MoE pays the staff and is then reimbursed by whoever runs the school. Whoever is running the school is defaulting on the reimbursement, so effectively the taxpayers are guaranteeing these schools.
They are a rort from go to whoa!
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u/Historical-Guide-242 14h ago edited 14h ago
They pay management and licensing fees for material that the MoE thinks shouldn't be paid. Going back through the trail of companies associated with this fee it eventually lands at Crimson education. A right wing organisation associated with John Key.
Ah, no. Villa Education Trust has nothing to do with Crimson Education. From the article:
A year later, in May 2025, Being AI sold its education business to Crimson Education and RNZ understands both schools cancelled their management services contracts with Being AI prior to the sale.
The payments for the syllabus would have been for Dweck's PBL programmes, which again have nothing to do with Crimson Education.
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u/JeffMcClintock 14h ago
so what exactly is the "conflict of interest"?
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u/Historical-Guide-242 13h ago edited 12h ago
so what exactly is the "conflict of interest"?
There are two there TBH. One relating to the IP payments to the previous owner and one relating to a contractor responsible for the school's finances. Neither have anything to do with Crimson.
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u/BlacksmithNZ 8h ago
I had not heard of Carol Dweck before, but some red flags there
She is in her words 'a superhuman who created a life-changing book just for you! I teach you how to cultivate and maintain a growth mindset' that somehow makes education better.
Her own research that shows that 'being positive' is just great, but everybody else trying to replicate the research finds it is not that simple. In fact her theory just doesn't hold
The fact that they were paying $1k a week for the 'secret of success' style thinking, is very clear sign of 'woo'
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u/AcrylicMessiah 14h ago
When you want alternative education for your children, you gotta put up with alternative and often substandard management. These outfits are a complete joke and I feel sorry for the kids forced into them.
State schools work for almost all kids. A small minority might need specialist education but large open schools teach kids about community and acceptance, not sheltering them from the 'wrong kind of people'.
Let charter schools fail. They're a sucky idea for sucky people.
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u/Okaringer 14h ago
Act has had a titanically outsized influence on education compared to the votes they got. All of this blatant corruption with no real mandate to do so by the public.
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u/night_dude 14h ago
Employment relations too. Its because the Nat caucus largely support their policies ideologically, but know they can't campaign on them because they suck.
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u/Ancient_Complex 14h ago
Charter schools are just a way to scrape public money in private pockets. Scamanonics-001.
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u/BlueLizardSpaceship 14h ago
It's like no single agency is accountable...
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u/OldKiwiGirl 9h ago
Well, they aren’t, not with the previous incarnation of Charter Schools and definitely not with the current incarnation.
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u/Big_Attention7227 14h ago edited 2h ago
Yet another purposeful failure by David Seymour ( paedophile enabler). It costs more per head than public school It has no oversight or monitoring by govt yet it is paid for by taxpayers It's a proven failed model from the past It once again smells like another corrupt Seymour project. This guy everything he touches fails.
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u/redmermaid1010 Mr Four Square 14h ago
The article states only 40% of pupils are attending the school.
Where are Seymours truancy officers when you need them?
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u/JeffMcClintock 14h ago
chasing poor kids
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u/redmermaid1010 Mr Four Square 13h ago
Exactly and in the mean time airports are full of kids jetting off to Australia, Hawaii, etc in the pre and post holiday periods.
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u/MikeOxlong____69 14h ago
Lol @ people here acting like normal public schools don't have these problems.
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u/KahuTheKiwi 13h ago
Can you link to any sources that match your unsubstantiated claims?
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u/MikeOxlong____69 11h ago
Here's a roughly 90 page document of schools currently under statutory intervention. It's not hard to find.
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u/Ohhcrumbs 13h ago
This is all freely available info from the ERO website.
You can see what schools have statutory management involved.
Don't get me wrong, I'm totally against charter schools, but yeah lost of standard public schools have significant problems too. Its the nature of electing school boards from the local community.
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u/OldKiwiGirl 9h ago
Normal public schools don’t have this problem
payments to third parties for management services and for intellectual property rights related to the schools' curriculums
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u/barbarabar666 15h ago
Remember the plan
3 sell it to private providers/mates.
profit