Associate Education Minister David Seymour. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
The country's first school for teenagers with autism will open next year.
The government announced Autism NZ Education Hub would start in Term 3 for neurodivergent secondary students who were struggling with traditional schooling.
The charter school was sponsored by Autism NZ and would operate from campuses in Wellington and Auckland, with 96 students to begin with.
Associate Education Minister David Seymour said students would have personalised learning plans built around their strengths, interests, and needs.
"Core education will be balanced with development of life skills and social-emotional learning," he said.
"The goal is to get students benefitting from in class education. It will utilise home-schooling, online learning, and community-based learning as ways to transition students back into the classroom, learning face-to-face."
Seymour said one size did not fit all when it came to education.
"It is estimated there are at least 3900 autistic students in years 9-13 in Auckland and Wellington. National data suggests there is disproportionately high and chronic absence and school rejection among neurodivergent and disabled students, particularly in secondary years," he said.
"The 2023 Education Review Office review on Alternative Education highlighted this concern. Autism New Zealand has relentlessly advocated for efforts to better understand and address these inequalities."
Seymour's office said the funding for the charter school would be broadly equivalent to that of state schools over the contract.
Autism NZ chief executive Dane Dougan said the school would be the first of its kind in New Zealand.
"We've been working on this for a while because we know that our autistic children, particularly those that don't get ORS funding or ongoing resourcing scheme funding, are three times more likely to be stood down than other students," he said.
"To be able to create an environment that's going to be conducive to their learning, along with putting in place an individualised plan for them where they can learn on what they're interested in and how they're interested in learning, for me it's super exciting to be able to make a difference in those young children's lives."
Dougan said autistic students in mainstream schools could have a very hard time.
"A lot of things could happen in a schooling environment where they could struggle. Things like bullying or being victimised, obviously sensory overloads in classrooms, things like changes of schedules last minute, all of those type of issues can cause quite a big problem for some of our young adults," he said.
"This is about choice, so parents and children can have the choice of where they want to go."
Seymour said Autism NZ Education Hub took the total number of charter schools to 17.
"It will join the five new charter schools announced in the last couple of weeks which will open in 2026. We expect more new charter schools to be announced before the end of the year, along with the first state schools to convert," he said.
"I want to thank the Charter School Agency and Authorisation Board for the work they have done getting charters open. They considered 52 applicants for new charter schools. This year they tell me the choices were very difficult."
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
