Let failing schools close or be taken over by better performing schools. End the discrimination against rural schools
Abolish zoning and allow parents to take their child's share of state funding to a school of their choice - public or private
Rather than abolishing national testing, a better idea would have been to expand it, commencing at a much earlier age so as to identify problems and performance issues early on before it is too late
Encourage students to achieve their potential by modernising bursary awards and encouraging scholarships

Increase the Operations Grant by 10%
Encourage partnerships between high and low-decile schools for their mutual benefit
Incorporate environmental education into the core curriculum at all levels and ensure that teacher education and training programmes allocate significant time for environmental education
Increase funding levels so that there are adequate resources in te reo for kura, kohanga reo, and other full immersion and bilingual learners
Support the comprehensive study of New Zealand history, including Te Tiriti o Waitangi, at all curriculum levels, in order to reduce racism and foster a sense of identity in our communities

Make the core competencies such as literacy, numeracy, verbal communication skills (including pronunciation), special needs teaching, teaching of children from diverse backgrounds and ICT, a compulsory requirement for all teacher-training programmes
Employ around 1,300 extra primary teachers in Year 1 classes over the next three years to ensure that by 2008 there are no more than 15 students in a class
Work towards full implementation of the School Staffing Review Group and Ministerial Taskforce on Secondary Teacher Remuneration
Foster and expand nation-wide state-funded mentoring schemes, including those that help young people teach other young people
Continue the evolutionary improvement of the NCEA

Immediately overhaul the NCEA and reintroduce demanding scholarship exams
Make available information on the performance of pupils and schools
Slash education bureaucracy by decentralising school management, and redirect funding to school budgets
National will sharpen the focus of the current curriculum review to ensure the result is simpler and clearer than the current jargon
Audit and improve school truancy programmes.

Review the ORRS scheme funding with a view of ensuring more funding is made available to directly meet the needs of the child as documented through the IEP process
Reformulate the decile funding component to lift the amounts available to those in decile 3-10 schools
Promote a programme of 'values' education in schools
Create a co-ordinated system of school support building on the Learning Support Centres
Conduct an immediate inquiry into, and maintain an ongoing review of NCEA assessment systems, and in particular NZQA's setting of standards and management of the assessment process

Establish ‘families’ of schools in an effort to improve coordination between pre-school, primary and secondary schools in a given area
Give schools the option of being direct-funded
Return scholarship exams to their previous format
Ensure that all schools teach drug education
Require education programmes dealing with risk-taking behaviour in adolescence (e.g. drugs, alcohol and sex) to present abstinence as a genuine option