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Speaker 1: Onto another subject, More and more parents are choosing to

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Speaker 1: send their kids to private schools. Ministry of Education data

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Speaker 1: is out that shows that in the twenty twenty to

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty five period, private school enrollment grew by five

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Speaker 1: times the public system. Guy Pasco is the CEO of

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Speaker 1: Independent Schools of New Zealand and with US high.

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Speaker 2: Guy, Hi, how are you?

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Speaker 1: I'm very well, thank you. So why are parents choosing

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Speaker 1: private over public?

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Speaker 2: Well, I think parents are choosing for a wide range

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Speaker 2: of reasons. So, you know, small class sizes, that could

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Speaker 2: be specific curriculum, pedagogy's high academic results. The schools we

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Speaker 2: represent range in size from about fifteen students as are

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Speaker 2: smaller school about two and a half thousand, and you

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Speaker 2: know they're catering those smaller schools are catering to students

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Speaker 2: with specific learning needs, high anxiety to sexy, that kind

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Speaker 2: of thing through a very large, well established school. So

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Speaker 2: there's a whole lot of ranges of reasons in there.

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Speaker 2: That's not really one specific thing.

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Speaker 1: How does that five year period compare to.

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Speaker 2: History, Well, you know, independent school enrolled in New Zealand

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Speaker 2: have hovered around about four percent nationally for actually quite

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Speaker 2: a long time, we have seen an increase, a bit

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Speaker 2: more of an increase in recent years, and COVID we

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Speaker 2: got a bit of a bump, and that was actually

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Speaker 2: common across the world as well. But I would also

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Speaker 2: say that it's so there hasn't been like a massive jump.

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Speaker 2: I would say it's been incremental over time.

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Speaker 1: Why did it happen during COVID globally though.

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Speaker 2: I think there's lots of reasons for that. I think,

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Speaker 2: you know, one was that families maybe weren't traveling in

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Speaker 2: that kind of thing, so they had more disposable income.

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Speaker 2: We had a lot of people coming back to New

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Speaker 2: Zealand and maybe that had their children in international schools

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Speaker 2: and they were used to that style of learning maybe

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Speaker 2: though from an international curriculum.

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Speaker 1: Also possible that during COVID we saw the decline in

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Speaker 1: a lot of children's learning because of what had happened,

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Speaker 1: the disruption and so on, and when it kind of

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Speaker 1: may have scared parents, shocked them into spending money on

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Speaker 1: their kids.

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Speaker 2: Oh for sure. I think one of the things that

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Speaker 2: independent schools did particularly well during COVID was made that

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Speaker 2: switch to online learning, and a lot of parents probably

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Speaker 2: saw that and that was no doubt a driver as well.

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Speaker 1: Now, I was wondering if this may turn around in

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Speaker 1: the next few years as Erica Stanford starts to clean

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Speaker 1: up the public sector. As in the public system.

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Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I can't really speculate on that, and certainly

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Speaker 2: we're not advocating for independent schools over state schools. We

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Speaker 2: want a really strong, robust education system in New Zealand

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Speaker 2: that all children can succeed, whether they're going to the

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Speaker 2: state school or an independent school.

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Speaker 1: Does it capture the charter schools as well?

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Speaker 2: No, it doesn't, So charter schools a part of the

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Speaker 2: state system. This is just independent or private school.

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Speaker 1: Okay, But if we look at it from a different lens,

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Speaker 1: which is like opting out of the public sector, the

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Speaker 1: public system could actually be bigger than these numbers suggest

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Speaker 1: because it may also include opting out and going into

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Speaker 1: charter schools.

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Speaker 2: It could do, but I can't. I can't speculate on that.

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Speaker 1: Guy. It's good to talk to you. Thank you for

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Speaker 1: your time, mate, Guy Pasco, Independent Schools of New Zealand CEO.

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