Education

Our Values

Every child should have access to a quality education that equips them with the knowledge and skills to succeed in life. We believe in empowering parents to choose the best education for their children, whether that is in the public, private, or partnership school system. We support high standards, real accountability, and choice for parents. Public schools should focus on teaching core knowledge in reading, writing, maths, science, and history, alongside building resilience and character.

Our Achievements

ACT has driven many of the Government’s actions to deliver choice and improve outcomes in education. These include:

• Restoring partnership schools: ACT secured the return of charter schools, giving communities the ability to establish innovative, flexible schools that are publicly funded but independently run.

• Scrapping failed “Modern Learning Environments”: ACT welcomed the Government’s decision to end the open-plan classroom experiment that disrupted learning and failed to deliver better results.

• Refocusing the curriculum on core knowledge: ACT supported curriculum changes to strengthen literacy and numeracy teaching, ensuring every student masters the basics before moving on to more advanced subjects.

• Pushing for accountability in NCEA reform: ACT has been a strong voice for lifting assessment standards and ensuring NCEA genuinely reflects student achievement.

• Promoting school attendance: ACT secured a coalition commitment to prioritise regular attendance by improving reporting and enforcement to reduce truancy.

Our Next Goals

The coalition Government has not gone as far as ACT would like, but it’s gone further than it would have without ACT. We always have more ideas ready, and here are some we continue to advocate.

Introduce a Student Education Account system

ACT will continue to push for every child to have a publicly funded account that parents can use at any registered school or education provider, giving families real choice and encouraging innovation in education.

Publish detailed school performance data

ACT supports publishing clear, comparable information about every school’s performance so parents can make informed choices and schools are held accountable for results.

Raise teaching standards

ACT will work to ensure that teacher training is focused on proven, evidence-based methods for teaching literacy and numeracy, and that professional development is targeted to improve classroom outcomes.

Reward the best teachers

ACT has proposed performance-based pay to reward the best teachers for achieving outstanding results in the classroom. Great teachers transform lives, and the current pay scale fails to recognise or retain top talent. ACT supports enabling schools to pay their best teachers more, based on student progress and peer recognition, so excellence in teaching is encouraged and rewarded.