The Charter School Agency signed a charter school contract with a trust that did not exist.
In October, Associate Education Minister David Seymour posted a notice in the New Zealand Gazette that the agency had entered a contract with the “NZPAA Charitable Trust” to set up the New Zealand Performance Academy Aotearoa as a charter school.
But no such trust or trust with a variation of that name existed or exists in the Charities Register.
The secondary school is to be established in Trentham next year, with a focus on young athletes in Years 11 and 13.
It would be based at the New Zealand Campus of Innovation and Sport, which hosts organisations including the Wellington Phoenix Football Club and the Wellington Hurricanes rugby team.
Charter school opponent John O’Neill from the Aotearoa Educators Collective spotted the problem.
He said he investigated the school’s sponsor – the organisation that owns and sets up a charter school – because he did not understand why public money should be spent on a specialist school for sports.
He said it was only after he began asking questions that a limited company, the New Zealand Performance Academy Aotearoa, ultimately owned by Welnix, the owners of the Wellington Phoenix, was registered. That happened last week on November 6.
O’Neill told RNZ he was surprised the charter school agency signed a contract with a non-existent organisation.
“I started asking myself, how on earth could this have happened given the great attention given to due diligence processes that are supposed to surround these applications and consideration and approval of applications to be a charter school,” he said.
O’Neill said he wanted to know how two parties could have entered into a contract when one of them didn’t exist and how could the Charter School Authorisation Board have recommended approval of the application.
In a written response to RNZ, the agency said:
“The Charter School Agency received an application from a proposed sponsor seeking approval to operate a new charter school.
“During the application and contracting process, the proposed sponsor indicated it would establish a separate entity to contract with the agency. This resulted in a complication around the name used in the contract. We are working with the sponsor to resolve this. This is not expected to impact on plans for the school to open in February next year.”
Asked if the contract with the non-existent trust was valid the agency said in a statement: “The Charter School Agency is seeking advice on the existing contract. It is unable to comment until this advice has been received.”
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Wellington Phonenix general manager David Dome told RNZ he could not go into whether the contract was valid.
“I’m not comfortable talking about that because there’s sort of legal issues there now,” he said.
Nor would he talk about why the agency thought it was signing a contract with a trust.
“During the the contracting process we were always going to set up a separate contracting or business structure to run the school and we’re doing that with the agency now,” he said.
However, he said the issue would have no effect on work to set the school up and nor would setting the school up with a limited company rather than a trust as the sponsor.
He said he fully expected the school would be operational by February next year.
Dome said he expected the school would start with 100 students.
“The kids in the Phoenix Academy would obviously have some interest in it, but it’s really open to any student who wants to pursue an education that has a sports inclination. It’s open to anybody,” he said.
He said the school would offer more than just a physical education-heavy curriculum.
“It’s not just PE. It is everything to do around sports and sports development. So there will be mental skills, sports preparation, life after sports, nutrition, strength and conditioning. So there’s a whole lot to it,” he said.
Associate Education Minister David Seymour did not explain what action he had taken over the matter or whether it had affected his confidence in the agency.
Instead, he said in a statement that he understood “there was a complication with a changing name which the sponsor and the agency are working together to resolve”.
rnz.co.nz
