Over the last week, David Seymour has been hitting the media announcing a new group of charter schools. I discussed three of these in my previous article so now let’s turn our attention to the fourth one.
You will find that, typically, Seymour has been ‘economical with the truth’, in other word just making stuff up to gain the headlines and depending on the inability/unwillingness of the media to cast a critical eye over his pronouncements.
Fortunately we can rely on the various highly skilled and knowledgeable people behind the Aotearoa Educators Collective to reveal the actual situation.
The first ‘sports school’ in New Zealand? (Not)
“On 20 October, the Associate Minister of Education, and charter schooling circus ringmaster, Hon David Seymour, announced his approval of what he called New Zealand’s ‘first sports school’, the New Zealand Performance Academy Aotearoa (NZPAA), to commence in 2026, in Upper Hutt.”
As you’d expect with most things that Seymour says, he is either ignorant or deliberately misleading. Take your pick.
“Not to split hairs, Mr Seymour but, in fact, a specialist sports school, Manakura (originally named Tū Toa), began in Palmerston North in 2005. Established through a Māori education charitable trust, it became a Y9-Y13 designated character state school in 2015. In 2024, it moved to a purpose-built campus funded by a $20 million government grant, on land donated by Massey University.”
Mr Seymour claimed, nonetheless, that NZPAA was evidence that “the charter school model can be different if we let communities bring their ideas to the table”
And also:
‘Associate Minister Seymour’s Beehive release also waxed lyrical about the educational benefits for the Year 11-13 students who will attend: “The school will serve students with serious sporting aspirations, giving them the skills to ignite a professional career, while ensuring they get the academic education all students need…. Students will no longer have to sacrifice their education in pursuit of sporting dreams, or vice versa”’.
Sounds good, Mr Seymour.
However let’s have a little look at the Manukura School website
On their “About” page, we find the following information.
“Our Vision
“If we continue to teach as we did yesterday, we rob our children of their tomorrow.”
Commitment
“He rangi tā matawhāiti, he rangi tā matawhānui.”
The balance of face to face and self directed online learning with the support of passionate curriculum leaders, supervisors and tutors is now a proven formula for academic excellence. MANUKURA has evolved a student centred education system over the past fifteen years that has achieved outstanding academic results. Each student is nurtured in their academic learning programme to ensure successful outcomes are achieved. A culture of excellence is an expected way of operating at MANUKURA. Furthermore, MANUKURA is committed to an educational programme that promotes learners to think beyond themself and today.
Tailored Learning
“He matenga poto, he oranga roa.”
All students have individualised plans that reflect their broad passions, aspirations and needs. These plans assist in maintaining a positive blend between students’ academics, interests and sporting career pathways. Students individual plans are reviewed regularly to ensure they are “living documents” focused on each students’ short, medium and long term outcomes.
Whānau Centered
“Kaua mā te waha pakarū, waiho mā te upoko pakarū.”
Whanau engagement and involvement is critical in the MANUKURA model, the student and their whānau link to ensure holistic development is achieved with the student centered in the decision making process. We welcome all enquiries, please get in touch with us today by any of the communication links at the bottom of the page.”
All of this completely destroys all the claims Seymour has made about his new charter school, and proves that innovative schooling can be provided within the current education system.
The AEC article continues:
“Our first Secondary School Sports Academy (SSSA) opened in 1997 at Aranui in Christchurch. Many others soon followed. By 2019 there were 93 SSSAs (or roughly one in every four secondary schools). In 2025, there could well be more. In 2019, researchers at Auckland University of Technology reported that these academies serve primarily as marketing tools.”
So do these academies serve the children’s best interests, or the schools?
But wait, there’s more.
“Mr Seymour’s story is not quite the same story told by NZPPA board member Brett O’Riley when interviewed by Mike Hosking the next morning about what Hosking described as a ‘dream come true’ opportunity for sports lovers. O’Riley enthusiastically recounted the phone ‘running hot’ with enquiries from the Hutt Valley catchment and across the Wellington region (presumably a fair number of these are from students currently at other secondary schools that have invested heavily in developing SSSAs and high-performance sports programmes, and who face the very real prospect of having their top performers creamed/poached by NZPAA).”
And there’s yet more:
‘Hosking inconveniently asked about the mismatch between establishing a high performance, elite athlete school, and the rules of the scheme that say all charter schools are obliged to take anyone who wants to enrol (i.e. elite, not quite elite, passionate but ordinary, or just sports-curious).
“MH: How does it work? Do you pick winners? Are you cherry picking…?
BO: No, our funding that comes through the charter school programme really establishes us as a school that takes all comers, anyone who is interested in going to the [NZPAA] and they can participate in the school alongside people who are part of the Wellington Phoenix Academy….
MH: Surely, if you’ve got a facility, you want to plug in the best athletes where they can excel to the point where they will live to their fullest potential. Isn’t that what that’s all about?”’
The AEC article then unpicks what this means in practice.
“So at least two bloopers from Mr O’Riley. First, he revealed that the school will effectively have A and B streams. A for the top jocks, and B for the sports fans. And second, he let slip that a major purpose of the school is to provide academic pathway support for the Wellington Phoenix Football Academy.”
Oh and who is behind the Wellington Phoenix Football Academy, and this new charter school?
“The General Manager of Wellington Phoenix, and a founder member of the NZPAA board, is David Dome. Dome is reportedly one of the ‘visionaries’ behind the charter school. He hopes that its establishment will allow Wellington Phoenix to double the number of children in its Academy to 36, all of whom are boarders.”
So what’s the story here, Mr Seymour? Feeding more tax payer money to corporates mates again?
“The other issue of course, is cui bono? Or who benefits when corporate business interests are allowed to profit from state-funded schooling? Mr Seymour implied that the community (i.e. ordinary kiwis) came up with this idea. That’s a porkie in my view because he omitted to tell us that the new charter school appears, on the publicly available evidence at least, to be the result of a mutually beneficial commercial opportunity snapped up by Wellington Phoenix (i.e. Welnix GP Limited), the Wellington Phoenix Football Academy Limited, and the New Zealand Campus of Innovation and Sport (NZCIS), another private limited company. NZCIS has been jointly owned since 2016 by two well-known, large scale commercial property and residential subdivision developers based in Upper Hutt, Malcolm Gillies and Kevin Melville.”
The article goes into NZCIS in some depth, and I recommend you read it.
And there’s a very big BUT:
“Let’s wind back a bit. Is the idea a good one as its proponents and cheerleaders claim? The research evidence does not paint such a rosy picture of the effects of sports specialisation for elite young athletes or their families.”
In particular:
“Sport specialization often requires increased training hours and may predispose young athletes to social isolation, poor academic performance, increased anxiety, greater stress, inadequate sleep, decreased family time, and burnout.”
There is so much more in the AEC article, especially about the financial aspects and profit seeking of the charter school’s owners. I’ve only highlighted sections and again I recommend you read it.
“Let’s just imagine for a moment that the owners of three entities are only very well off, or modest multi-millionaires, rather than billionaires. Even so, is it too much to ask them to act like genuine philanthropists and at the very least match the funding they will receive from the taxpayer for establishing and running their private school?”
Yeah, right. Seymour is playing us for fools and winning.
We don’t have to look too closely to recognise that Seymour is the male version of Collins! Hidden agendas, smoke and mirrors, distractions, downright lies, while forever slithering sideways – all with that stupid, inane smirk on his face. Of course, much is about the Great God Money and again I ask “WHEN IS ENOUGH ENOUGH?” For many out there, they will never have enough even if they are “filthy rich = extremely wealthy, often implying that the amount of money is excessive or outrageous!” What a horrible grasping and ugly trait to have. Money does not make you happy. Of course it is essential, but not in bucket-loads. Many philanthropic wealthy in NZ give to the genuine needy and thank you to them. A question – if we can rid our country of the ACT vermin et al does that mean that the toxic Atlas, which seems to have its tentacles firmly embedded in our lovely NZ, could be exterminated as well? Back to your original question – A = of course Seymour is deliberately misleading all of us. While Luxon is our worst PM, Seymour is our most dishonest MP. Please, some higher force out there, protect us from this EVIL.
He sure is playing us.
He’s also playing his supporters.
Who in their right mind believes that a school for 36 children will have access to the best academic teachers for the proper education the children need?
Most of their teaching will be on-line and actually NOT tailored to individual students at all.
The parents will be pushing little Johnny to go to these ‘academies’ for the parent’s own gratification.
Junior gets separated from his own peer group and friends, is forced to spend hours travelling and has to come up to dad’s (or mum’s) very high sporting expectations. It’s a recipe for disaster.
Of course they are cherry-picking and they will create kids with gaps in the their education and mental problems from the incessant demands of everyone, to perform.
For the ‘sports interested’ it is a disaster. Being set up to fail against the creme de la creme before you even consider the lacklustre education on offer.
Sounds like a real inside job and criminal manipulation of a lax system allowed, by weak Luxon, to be established. Greed again.
The only upside I can see is when Labour take the reins next year they can turn all the Charter schools back into state run schools because the private Charter schools are using our taxpayer money for a return to private investors.
Besides being Ignorant I firmly believe that Seymour is being his Typical Self i.e Arrogant.
Since he became an MP his Arrogant Knows No Boundaries. It is ever increasing and unless someone in this so-called coalition government has the Balls and Spine to Knock him Down or Out then he will continue on his Arrogant Back on Track attitude.
Looing at the fact the Weak and Spineless often Missing in Action Part-time prime minister of NZ is too scared to do anything about Seymour I get the impression no-one in the coalition will pull him to account.
He will continue to pedal out mis-information and then blame things on Labour or BOTS because according to David Seymour He is Incapable of Making Mistakes. May Long Term Karmic Payback finally catch up with him.