Photo: 123RF
A New Zealander who founded an international online private school says he will apply to set up an online charter school.
On Thursday, the government opened initial applications for the publicly-funded private schools with online schools a possibility for the first time.
Crimson Global Academy chief executive Jamie Beaton said the company wanted to extend its online model to a charter school.
He said the proposed school would be separate from its existing private school, which Education Ministry data showed had about 70 New Zealand students last year.
Beaton said the charter school would offer small-group online tuition using the A-level curriculum provided by education companies Pearson and Cambridge International Education.
He said the existing New Zealand curriculum was failing students and they were not keeping up with students in other countries.
International testing showed New Zealand 15-year-olds' performance in reading, maths and science has been falling but was above OECD averages.
"What I'm really focused on is levelling up students from a value-add perspective from where they come, to getting them first up to speed with global standards and then hopefully pushing them beyond that," Beaton said.
He said the school was likely to attract students from low-income communities.
"We expect that actually the majority of our students will be coming from disadvantaged backgrounds with learning challenges who previously haven't had the opportunity to thrive in a physical classroom in core subjects like maths, English and science," he said.
Beaton said he expected the school would also attract students who were not happy with the learning and social environment of their current school.
"There are kids in New Zealand who don't feel safe in their school from a physical harassment standpoint. They don't feel psychologically safe and online schooling provides an escape valve to these students to escape that chaos and focus in an environment where they can really thrive.
"This environment won't be right for all Kiwis, but there'll be a huge cross section of New Zealanders who are being left behind by the current system, and that's where we're gonna step up," he said.
Beaton said he hoped to open the school next year and increase enrolments quickly.
However, he said quality was the most important factor because critics of charter schools would weaponise any failures.
Beaton was also founder and CEO of Crimson Education, a company that helped students apply for leading international universities.