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10:17 am, October 31st, 2025 - 24 comments
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Some of the implications of David Seymour’s Charter School policy are now becoming clear.
Individual State Schools face the prospect of hostile takeover by groups that may wish to change dramatically the way that the school is run.
And Kelston Boys High School is a test case for how the process may work.
From Ben Leahy at the Herald:
A prominent Auckland public school is publicly distancing itself from a hostile takeover bid seeking to “forcibly” convert it into a charter school.
Kelston Boys’ High School acting principal David Samuela posted an open letter to school parents today, saying the takeover attempt was “not affiliated with Kelston Boys’ High School”.
“Our senior leaders and staff do NOT believe that becoming a charter school is in the best interests of our students and community,” he said in the letter, adding he was “disappointed in the lack of transparency in this process”.
The bid was backed by a sponsor called Bangerz Education and Wellbeing Trust (Bewt), which is a youth charity.
The Bewt website said it operated a youth hub in New Lynn and that its board was “made up of Pasifika and Māori youth who are under 25″.
It lodged an application this month to convert Kelston Boys’ to a charter school, saying if that was approved, it would complete the conversion and hire a new principal and leadership by January 2026, ready for the new school year.
Its unsolicited takeover was based on claims of deep academic failure at the school.
The School is totally opposed to the proposal and considers it to be an unnecessary distraction.
The Application is being made by Siaosi Gavet with the support of the Bangerz Wellbeing and Education Trust which is a registered charity.
Its consultation report filed in relation to the attempted takeover is somewhat amateur.
Mr Gavet is a fan of Charlie Kirk and very upset at trans women being involved in women’s sport. It is easy to guess what his political views are.
You have to wonder how this can actually happen but law changes made in 2024 allow it.
Under the Education and Training Act 2020 one or more members of a school’s community with the support of the proposed sponsor can apply to convert a state school into a charter school. The Charter Schools Authorisation Board then has various criteria to consider in determining whether or not to grant the application.
Relevant considerations include, the quality of the sponsor, the standard of tuition to be provided, financial implications for the Crown, if the conversion would allow students to access quality schooling and have choice about the types of education they receive, the level of support from the community and any other matter the Board thinks fit.
It is also required in this case to consider the performance of the school, and the level of support from students, staff and the school community for the sponsor and for the proposed conversion.
I have not had time to dig deeply into the membership of the Authorisation Board. I note however they were picked by David Seymour and that Professor Elizabeth Rata is a member. She is described in this E Tangata article as often equating “the inclusion of iwi, hapū and whānau knowledge and values into teaching with an emptying out of academic knowledge“. She has also been used by the Government as a contributor to the school curriculum. She is described as an avowed libertarian and submitted in support of Act’s Treaty Principles Bill.
Other members include former St Cuthberts Principal Justine Mahon, former Act President and candidate Catherine Isaac, former Forsyth Barr managing director Neil Paviour Smith, and Doran Wyatt who is a real estate and construction partner at law firm Russell McVeagh. I would not trust them to understand how Kelston works.
One can only imagine what Destiny Church will do if this application succeeds. Why Kelston Boys High School need to address this at all is weird. During exam time I cannot imagine a worse distraction.
Charter schools need to go. At the very minimum the ability of an outside entity to attempt a hostile takeover of a school needs to be removed from the Statute Book.
I’m on the board of my kid’s school, and the thought of this absolutely terrifies me.
Delivering good governance in education is hard enough without having to worry about fending off hostile takeover bids. Especially if they're made in bad faith.
If this goes through, every school board up and down the motu will be quietly worried. Because the message will be clear: our skills, perspectives, and accountability to our communities no longer matter.
What matters is whether we comply with the minister’s pre-conceived worldview.
if it goes through, hopefully school boards and parents/students will be noisily worried.
Every parent who's committing time and effort to being a board of trustees member of a school now has a right to expect from the Minister of Education an explanation of what the supposed point of them contributing all this unpaid labour is if the school can be completely changed without reference to them.
There are a lot of people (other than the late and unlamented Charlie Kirk) who know that sex is real and that it matters. No child is born in the wrong body, and girls sports are for girls.
Unfortunately, the Relationships and Sex Education section of the curriculum for New Zealand schools has promulgated the lie that actual biological reality is secondary to some sort of "gendered soul".
There are increasing numbers of parents and caregivers all over the world who do not want their children to be subject to this ideology in a State school.
which leaves a door open for the kind of ani-democratic nonsense being tried at Kelston. It's not as if liberals can't teach both biological sex and gender non conformity. But no, they have to impose ideology, which creates this kind of backlash.
If the takeover goes ahead, and if BEWT are conservative, it's not just sex/gender education that will change at that school, and the sex/gender education will become gender conservative rather than including gender critical.
Yes, we know when we were force teamed with the alphabet swamp collection and they draped themselves in our Rainbow flag and batterned onto the hard won advances in the rights of same sex attracted people, that when their perversity and fanaticism finally caught the attention of the rest of society, that the backlash would affect us all.
I can't actually believe they did this. Wtaf. I hope this is an example of incompetency that will be obvious in needing to be fixed.
Also, ACT are pseudo libertarians who know quite well how to manipulate and abuse power.
Thankfully.
Is there any right of appeal?
Bewt's explanation
https://www.bewt.nz/conversion.php
As an ex-Kelston Boys graduate I am really sad at this turn of events.
This was the classic school for traditional working class people from suburbs with little by way of social capital, but with a huge focus on sports because that was the way you got out of there and into a decent salary. And so far as I can track it's still that way.
There's elite sailors, League and Rugby guys, wrestlers, golfers, soccer players, middle distance runners and more on the Pavilion walls, and you see them turn up at the occasional reunion. Too many to name there.
There was just a few of us made it out the other side and into university graduation, into standard professions. People like Sam Stubbs who now runs Simplicity.
Kelston Boys together with Kelston Girls and what was then the School for Deaf were the biggest institutions for miles and miles and they were the key to any kind of social mobility and formation of social capital.
Let them keep doing the good job they are doing, as a state school!
Yep. I have nephews who went there and went onto get Uni degrees and from there well-paid jobs that they enjoy.
One of them has never been interested in sports.
I'm saddened to see this attempted take-over of a school that has been very successful, and also has produced some excellent sports people.
Looks as though there may be another Kelston school in the mix – Auckland Sports College want to take over the site of Kelston Girls – and set up a sporting academy.
http://www.sportscolleges.nz/kelston.php
I don't know their relationship (if any) with this attempted takeover of Kelston Boys.
Sportcolleges and Bangerz Education and Wellbeing Trust (Bewt), are all run by the same group of people
I'm also a bit alarmed that my old school is in the news like this. It was a good school when I was there in early 70's that gave me good grounding in life, with all its pleasures and terrors. But I'm not that surprised that something like this has popped out with some of the half baked fundamentalist things (of all stripes) that pop up in West Auckland.
But looking at their web site's content and presentation they look very amateur and way out of their depth. They'll have to do a lot better than that.
As an illustration of how risk averse the Charter Schools Authorisation Board is, an outfit here in Queenstown that was doing leadership and academic coaching applied to become a Charter School and got turned down. These people were very professional, evidently well resourced and had support in the community, you'd have thought they would have ticked all the boxes, but got turned down
You would like to thing they would have to do "way better". However with Seymour in the loop it won't be necessary.
I was quite surprised when Ligar got turned down, they looked the part and had a market in wealthy locals who wanted a "better" education for their child than they perceived Wakatipu High could provide. Add to that Wakatipu bursting at seams despite only being 6 years old, they're into the second round of prefabs, and I thought Rigar would have been a shoe in. Maybe they weren't as well resourced as they made out? Promptly folding the tent might be clue there.
Seymore seems to be quite risk averse with the second try at Charter Schools, the first go had a few that could have charitably been described as naive, or maybe outright con artists. He probably won't want a repeat.
As a WRLB constituent it is disappointing to see you playing the man rather than the ball in criticising BEWT's takeover bid because of Gavet's irrelevant belief (that he shares with the vast majority of New Zealanders) that womens sport is for females.
The problem with this situation is not that Gavet doesn't pass a niche ideological purity test. The problem is that New Zealand's public schools should not be up for grabs by random private interest groups of any political persuasion – full stop.
Que?
So his political views are irrelevant? And you completely ignore that I said that he is a fan of Charlie Kirk in the very same sentence. And it was mentioned first so obviously it was of greater importance to me than his total opposition to any respect for trans rights.
Please don't "[a]s a WRLB constituent" me. I have spent my whole career expressing my views forcibly. I believe it is better to say what you think rather than blur what you think in the pursuit of a few extra votes.
The problem is that Gavet has extreme right wing views and the Government has given him the chance to completely undermine and upend a school with a proud history.
And please don't think that a sit down and reasonable discussion will resolve this. The Government has weaponised these groups to attack public schools.
it's not apparent if he has extreme rw views, or bog standard religious conservative views. I can't find much online.
The problem I have is NACTF creating this pathway to Charter schools in the first place. But if we say RW conservatives can't have schools, then why shouldn't the right say the same thing about liberal specialist schools? We have to have better arguments than 'don't like his politics'.
Not disagreeing with your views in any way – the thought that some bunch of ideologues can muscle their way into control of any educational establishment makes my skin crawl. But if the relevant Act was passed in 2020, how can NACTF be said to have "created this pathway"?
Version as at 1 July 2025. Amendments.
Yep amendment passed in 2024.
DETAIL
There were plans to have the Kelston Boys School and Kelston Girls School on the one site (Kelston Boys School).
https://www.kotakureo.school.nz/parents-and-whanau/news-and-events/kelston-visioning-project-update
Because of this there was/is a proposal to place a charter school on the Kelston Girls School site when this happens.
Auckland Sports College – Kelston
http://www.sportscolleges.nz/kelston.php
There is now also another proposal that plans to have another charter school (boys only) on the Kelston Boys High School site from next year.
From Bangerz Education and Wellbeing Trust (Bewt)
https://www.bewt.nz/conversion.php
There is no known plan to also have a charter girls school on the Kelston Boys High School site.
The Authorisation Board.
https://www.charterschools.govt.nz/board/
So its not enough for the coalition charter school abomination to plunder the public purse for new land and buildings its also allowed to attack existing public schools.
Wtf is the opposition on this as werent all the charter schools from the shonky era proven to be little more than assets taxpayers funded with SFA education if any happening in any of them !
Gloves off and start punching please opposition as charter schools is taxpayer funding ideological projects approved by Seymour's cronies.
I am stunned by this news, not surprised, but stunned. That a group of businessmen and ACT supporters think they can hijack a local school to create their own private little institution. Stunned by the seeming arrogance and brazenness of this action. But not surprised at all that Seymours intentions behind the pre-election rhetoric of "lifting achievement levels" and "lifting student attendance/engagement" are starting to become manifest