Photo: RNZ/ Nick Monro
Some charter schools say they are turning students away before they have even opened.
Seven of the publicly funded, privately owned schools are scheduled to open their doors over the next two weeks.
Tipene is a boarding school opening on the site of the former St Stephen's School, in Auckland's Bombay, on Waitangi Day.
One of its two tumuaki, Nathan Durie, said it was the first Māori boarding school to open in 100 years and it had received four times as many applications as places for its first intake.
"We ended up with just over 120 applications so we re-approached the trust board to say would they shift the number from 30, where our initial figure was pitched at, to allowing us to have 40 and we've landed at 42."
Interest in the school was not restricted to well-off families, despite a boarding fee of $20,000, which was off-set by a $5000 scholarship for each student, he said.
"I think what we've seen over the last decades is that there isn't a lack of appetite for boarding schools. Cost definitely plays a part in it, and so the trust board worked really hard to make this affordable.
"If you were to look at what it costs to raise young people, let alone have them access opportunities in sport and culture and all of the other costs that come on top of feeding and clothing children, this is actually a cost-effective way of raising young people."
The school's founders applied to set up a charter school rather than attempting to set up a special character or integrated school because that was the option that was available, Durie said.
Mastery School is a Christchurch outpost of an Australian group of schools.
Sixty primary-aged children were enrolled with a further 40 wait-listed, principal Rose McInerney said. All were children who struggled in mainstream classrooms.
"A lot of our students have learning struggles and they might have a diagnosis of dyslexia, or dysgraphia, or dyscalculia. They might find learning hard. Those are the children that we're serving in our school."
The school used a very specific teaching method, she said.
"We teach 85 percent repeated content every day so it's very predictable, the children know exactly what to expect and then each day we're introducing 15 percent new material and then we're testing them really regularly, so every two weeks they're getting a mastery test.
"It's amazing. the children come to love and look forward to those tests because they're achieving success at the level they're at."
Also in Christchurch is Christchurch North College, set up by a group of local state schools to work with disengaged children.
The school's starting roll of 15 was over-subscribed and some families were overwhelmed by the prospect of a new start for their children, principal Justin Fields said.
"We've had two interviews so far and there's been a lot [of] tears. But the fact is that there's also a lot of hope coming through from parents who just love their children who, like us, just want the best for them."
The charter model allowed the schools to create a separate entity with its own funding and staffing rather than tacking a unit or class for struggling students on to an existing school, he said.
"There are certainly schools doing some of the things that we're going to do, but it's going to be a combination of factors that we think are going to work because we can drill down in terms of resources.
"We're going to have intensive wrap-around hauora support for these students. I think that's probably, alongside the personalised learning plans, going to be the real key."
Schools in other parts of Christchurch, and probably in other cities, were likely to want similar set-ups and the college could create satellites in other areas, Fields said.
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