Operating a charter school

These documents will give you a broad overview of some of the more detailed aspects of operating a charter school.

Maintaining school property

Property funding is allocated to state schools in Ministry owned property based on a combination of a school’s property entitlement, actual building area, and needs based funding (as required). That means the amount schools receives differs from year to year. In charter schools, there’s a different system. They receive a per student amount of funding for property, rather than needs-based funding. There are two different types of property arrangements for charter schools:

Sponsor leased / sponsor-owned
Crown owned.

Funding model

The key principle of the charter schools funding model is the funding follows the student.

Funding arrangements for charter schools reflect the greater flexibility in the charter schools model by providing funding mainly as a cashed-up per-student amount to cover five funding categories:

Establishment (for new schools only).
Property.
Services.
Staffing.
Operations.

Cashed up funding is calculated to achieve broad equivalence with the resourcing for state schools of a similar roll and type.

Charter school sponsors have autonomy over how their funding is spent, but they are expected to apply the cashed-up funding in the best way possible to achieve the contracted outcomes.

There is one exception: sponsors of schools that occupy property owned by the Ministry of Education must spend at least 70 percent of their capital maintenance funding on projects that create Crown assets.

Performance management framework

Charter schools have greater flexibility than state schools to innovate, including in the design of a school’s structure, governance, and curriculum. In exchange for greater flexibility, they are subject to a higher level of oversight and accountability through the performance management framework. The framework sets out performance outcomes, measures and targets, as well as the methods used to track these. It will be used to hold sponsors to account and provide the Government and the community with assurance that charter schools are delivering quality education.

Contract pack

The Charter School contract pack is made up of three documents:

This contract is for all charter schools including new, converting and distance, and applies to all year groups.