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Two new charter schools due to open next year are yet to lock down a site in Napier or Hamilton but will both target poorer Maori teenagers.

Te Kopuku High in Hamilton will have an opening roll of 90 students targeting Maori from low socio-economic backgrounds, while Te Aratika Academy is a male secondary school for year 11-13 with an opening roll of 67 students in Napier.

Under-secretary to the Minister of Education, David Seymour, announced the new sponsors on Tuesday - he also went on the defence, saying there's a "constant focus of relentlessly negative attacks" on the ACT Party-inspired model.

"I don't think it's entirely fair our partnership school sponsors have had to be their own PR agents while also setting up schools in often quite heroic and successful ways but nevertheless that's part of the reality they face."

Seymour said the new sponsors don't have to tell the Ministry of Education where they will run their school from until 90 days before they open. Both are still working through negotiations to lease existing premises.

A third school was expected to be announced - a proposed bilingual West Auckland school run by the Waipareira Trust, which is headed by former MP John Tamihere.

But the trust pulled out at the eleventh hour when it already had 100 children enrolled because the Government wouldn't accept two amendments to the contract in relation to the Treaty of Waitangi.

There were 26 applications for the third round of schools and Seymour said he expected some who missed out would reapply in the fourth round, which are now open.

Most schools had done extremely well and delivered positive results, often in their first year, he said.

"Vanguard Military School has taken on 60 kids who previously were not attending any school whatsoever when they came to Vanguard."

Since 2014 nine charter schools have opened, mostly in Auckland and Northland, while Te Pumanawa o te Wairua in Whangaruru has since closed.

It was given a series of warnings and closed down in March after the school was plagued with problems, including bullying, drugs, poor student achievement and inadequate teaching.

In May Seymour announced seven new schools would be funded to open in 2018 and 2019, costing taxpayers upto $600,000 each to set up.

He disputed the roll out of the model, part of a confidence and supply agreement with National, was slow.

"As with any policy you can go too fast, so as we've developed this policy we've looked around the world...there's criticism of how the model for example developed in Houston...and Houston has been dogged by that for 20 years."

In a move to overcome some of the issues that led to the closure of Te Pumanawa o te Wairua, an independent support group has been set up for charter schools.

There has also been cuts made to the establishment costs provided to sponsors ahead of the school's opening - one of the lessons learnt from earlier application rounds, Seymour said.

The Government is still in commercial negotiations with the sponsors of the Whangaruru school after the original contract left the Crown with little power to recoup the millions of dollars spent on land and resources.

"I think one aspect of that that has been missed repeatedly is that they did actually use probably most of the money they received in the process of educating those kids," Seymour said.