Free, openly-licensed policy templates for New Zealand schools
A community library of school policy templates you can use, adapt to your school, and improve. Free for every school in New Zealand.
Launching soon
No subscription. No lock-in. Yours to keep and share.
Today, NZ schools have two options for policy
Most schools use one or the other. We think there should be a third way: free, openly licensed, and yours to keep.
Subscribe to a policy provider
The established option. Around four in five New Zealand schools pay a subscription provider to manage their policies. It's the default most schools reach for.
Write them yourself
Start from a blank page or a colleague's old Word doc. You get full control, but it's slow, it's easy to miss a legislative requirement, and every school ends up reinventing the same wheel in isolation.
Open, shared templates you keep and adapt
Free, openly-licensed policy templates built for New Zealand schools. Download them, make them yours, and when you improve one, contribute it back so every school benefits. No subscription, no lock-in, and no blank page to start from.
What the library will cover
We're building a base set of policy templates covering the areas New Zealand schools need most. Each one references the relevant NZ legislation and is designed as a starting point you tailor to your school. These are the categories we're starting with.
Curriculum & Student Achievement
Teaching, learning and assessment under the New Zealand Curriculum and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa, in line with the NELP.
Health, Safety & Wellbeing
The board's duties as a PCBU under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, covering EOTC, hazards and emergency management.
Child Protection & Safeguarding
The child protection policy and children's-worker safety checks required under the Children's Act 2014.
Behaviour, Restraint & Discipline
Physical restraint and reducing distress, plus stand-downs, suspensions and exclusions under the Education and Training Act 2020.
Personnel & Employment
Appointments, codes of conduct, professional standards, leave and protected disclosures (whistleblowing).
Finance & Property
Financial controls, sensitive expenditure, procurement, donations and the care of Crown property.
Privacy & Information
Privacy and information management under the Privacy Act 2020 and Official Information Act 1982, plus responsible use of digital technology.
Governance & Board
Strategic planning, delegations, conflicts of interest, concerns and complaints, and giving effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Templates are starting points, not legal advice. Review and adapt each one to your school's context before adopting it.
Openly licensed, and that's the point
Every template is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence. In plain terms, that means schools are free to use and adapt them, and improvements stay open for everyone.
You don't need permission and you'll never pay a licence fee. The templates can't be taken away, locked behind a paywall, or resold as someone else's product.
Attribution
Use and adapt them freely. Just credit where they came from.
Non-commercial
Free for schools to use. They can't be resold or repackaged for profit.
Share-alike
Improvements are shared under the same licence, so the library stays open.
How it works
Three simple steps. The third is what keeps the library getting better.
Use
Download or copy any template, free. No account, no subscription, no roll-based pricing.
Adapt
Drop in your school's details and tailor the wording to your context. The templates are yours to make your own.
Contribute
Improved a template or spotted a gap? Send it back so every school benefits from your work.
Built by schools, for schools
We're launching soon and looking for founding contributors. If you've written a policy that works well, refined one for your context, or spotted an area that needs covering, we'd love to include it. The library is only as strong as the community behind it, and your improvement becomes a head start for every other school in the country.
Schools using the templates
We're just getting started, so this space is empty for now. As schools adopt the templates, we'll list them here. Want your school to be one of the first? Get notified when we launch and you can start from day one.
Get behind the project
A free, openly-licensed library only keeps going if people get behind it. Support doesn't have to mean money. You can back the project by sponsoring its research and upkeep, by lending legal or governance expertise to review templates, or simply by helping more schools hear about it. We're looking for founding supporters before launch.
A better third option for school policy
Free, openly-licensed, and built for New Zealand schools. Be the first to know when the templates are released, or get involved now.