Kate Hawkesby

Each time Pharmac has a proposal, we put it out for usually about a month and say, look, does anyone have anything to say about this that we've missed?

And I think a little bit of humility and the wisdom of crowds isn't the worst thing.

OK, I'm breaking an embargo, but whatever.

So the charter schools and don't be angry at me.

So these charter schools numbers that you're putting out this afternoon prove once and for all, correct me if I'm wrong, that the cost per student from my reading of this is actually cheaper than public school.

Is that correct?

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Now I see the dangers of doing morning media.

Look, but you're right.

We talked about this a few weeks ago, the operating costs per student day by day once the school's set up.

The data we're releasing today shows that if you want to start a new school of 100 students, there's a cost to doing that for a state school and there's a cost to doing that for a charter school.

We actually give charter schools a much harder start

um by about two hundred thousand dollars in their first year in terms of what they get to set up uh for a state school they get funding for a principal for example for their first five terms they get funding for a certain number of students for their first five terms we basically fund them uh pretty generously for their first term after that they get

paid for the number of students that go through the door.

And so as a result, those startup components are actually lower for charters than for state schools.

And I hope that if we keep just releasing hard data like this, we might even win over the union somehow.

Well, exactly.

You can't argue with the numbers.

Anyway, I appreciate your time.

You have a good weekend.