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Maori Party leader Tariana Turia would like to see more Maori parents pushing for chartered schools as a way to the educational prospects of their children.
Two of the first five schools the Government has been approved under its partnership model of funding private initiatives are secondary schools targeting Maori.
Mrs Turia says the Maori Party backs anything that offers Maori children the opportunity for educational gains.
"There’s been many attempts to try to change mainstream and frankly, while some of it has worked, it has only worked for short periods of time. And the really tragic thing of it is, it only works if the government invests money into mainstream to get them to put a different lens on our students. Now that should not be happening. Our kids should be achieving wherever they are going to school," she says.
Mrs Turia says she sees charter schools in a similar light to the innovations of the 1980s, when Maori parents pulled their children from mainstream schools and started kura kaupapa.
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