Provide adequate health and education services in rural areas and small towns preferably by creating competitive networks and maximising co-operation between public and private providers

Retain and actively support local and rural schools
Improve demographic and population-based planning mechanisms to allow for better prediction of demand for early childhood services, schools, and their classroom requirements, while not disadvantaging rural communities
Provide incentives such as school housing to enable teachers to work and develop their careers in rural/remote communities

Not
set out
on
their
website.

Supports choice for parents in early childhood education and wants to see fairer, more flexible subsidies for early childhood education
Supports the Virtual Learning Network and would like to see further use of it
Reinstate agriculture and horticulture as NCEA scholarship-level subjects
Replicate institutions like Smedley Station in Hawke’s Bay and the Telford Polytech in South Otago to ensure good, practical training is available in other parts of rural New Zealand

Ensure that farmers and other rural workers are able to access industry training funds
Strengthen and improve education provisions in all sectors for rural areas
Increase the pool of funds available for Isolation Funding to reflect additional costs facing all rural schools
Reformulate the decile funding component to lift the amounts available to those in decile 3-10 schools

Recognise the importance of rural schools beyond just their educational function in rural communities
Support rural schools by ensuring that their operations grants are sufficient to meet the costs of providing the learning opportunities that government expects
Allow rural schools that are difficult to staff to pay more to attract quality teachers, and introduce bonding for teachers in areas where there are shortages through the use of student loan write-offs
Establish a network of 'rural education posts' to serve as adult and community education information centres