New Zealand's first-ever specialised elite sports school is set to open its doors next year, giving future athletes a space to study while building their sports careers.

This charter school will be run by the New Zealand Performance Academy Aotearoa and be based at Upper Hutt's NZ Campus of Innovation and Sport.

Wellington Phoenix general manager David Dome says plenty of research was carried out into developing this programme. 

"We looked at how the Americans did it, how they did it in Europe and Spain and Italy, and it was really combining education and sports - and it was really hard for us to do that at the time, given that there was only the state school alternative that we couldn't really be part of."

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