The Bay of Plenty Times asked Tauranga education leaders to assess the pros and cons of each party policy.
Western Bay of Plenty Principals' Association president Robert Hyndman said it would be nice if schools could have everything being offered by all of the parties.
He said each party was addressing a need in its own way.
"Obviously National is looking at leadership and working from the top down, Labour is looking at early childhood and the Greens care about poverty.
"Poverty is definitely an inhibitor to student achievement so I agree with the Greens in terms of that, whether the policy will achieve that I'll leave for someone else to decide."
Mr Hyndman said Labour's drive for early childhood education was positive as the better prepared students were when they started school, the better outcomes there would be.
He also agreed with National that the more upskilled teachers and principals were, the better off the sector would be.
Mr Hyndman said he would have liked more ability for principals to target a school's operations grant funding towards underachieving pupils.
NZEI Te Riu Roa immediate past president Ian Leckie said the biggest thing to affect educational achievement was the growing inequality between the haves and have nots.
"Research tells us if you want to affect achievement, 20 per cent of that comes from school factors and 10 per cent is in-class factors. Sixty per cent of achievement can be related to out-of-school factors." Mr Leckie said Labour and the Greens had more of a community support focus to their policies, while National looked at "name and shame" policies such as national standards to raise student achievement.
Otumoetai College principal Dave Randell said he saw merit in the establishment of new principal and teaching positions.
He approved of changes to early childhood education put forward by Labour but the Green's policy was more about welfare and not what was happening in classrooms.