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The Destiny church has “not received or made any kind of charter school application,” says its spokesperson Richard Lewis.
Lewis said an inquiry he made, many months ago, to the Associate Education Minister John Banks, “was simply to gather information about charter schooling and the Government’s plans in that direction, particularly for South Auckland.”
Destiny already operates a bilingual pre-school and a composite primary and secondary school of 190 pupils at Mt Wellington. It has been running for 8 years.
The School says that in 2011 there were 21 pupils in its senior class. All the students entered five subjects each for Cambridge International Examinations and there was a 71% percent pass rate.
Lewis said that school would be moving to Wiri at the end of the year when the church shifted its operations there.
Destiny’s plan was to expand the school, particularly for Maori and Pacific children in South Auckland.
The Green Party has expressed concern that so many religious organisations are interested in setting up charter schools.
The party says it has been told by Banks that 18 groups have consulted him about setting up the schools. That number included the Destiny Church, a United States-based profit-making school chain, the New Zealand chapter of the Maharishi Foundation, which practises transcendental meditation, trustees of the former Maori schools St Stephen’s and Queen Victoria.
Charter schools would get government funding and be free from many of the rules that bind state schools.
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