Let failing schools close or be taken over by better performing schools. End the discrimination against rural schools
Remove restrictive barriers to opening new schools so parents & teachers can cooperate to open new and innovative schools
Abolish zoning and allow parents to take their child's share of state funding to a school of their choice - public or private

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

Work with existing early childhood providers to encourage them to extend services, by either growing their centres or establishing additional centres on other sites.
Negotiate with internet providers to offer schools the option of a "bulk deal" price for internet charges
Expand the Youth Transitions Service to cover all regions in the country
Work with the school sector to investigate the operational needs of schools, the consequent adequacy of schools' resourcing and obtain recommendations for directions government could take to best resource schools
Develop solutions to address the additional time requirement of school-based assessment including special consideration for small, isolated schools

Recognises that the local school is the focal point of any rural community
Changes to the school network should be driven by educational quality and local choices
Opposes Labour’s plan to reform the Correspondence School to the disadvantage of rural New Zealand
Restore the right of schools who bulk fund their buses to decide where their buses run.

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

Ensure that school bus services are sufficiently resourced to meet the needs of rural communities
Establish an independent commission of inquiry to investigate the issue of access to education in rural areas as the starting point in the development of a comprehensive rural services strategy
Recognise the importance of rural schools beyond just their educational function in rural communities
Support Project PROBE as a way of ensuring that rural schools and communities have access to high-speed Internet services
Allow rural schools that are difficult to staff to pay more to attract quality teachers