Five-year timeline for high school
The Minister of Education, Chris Hipkins, has revealed a proposed opening date of 2025 for a new secondary school in Ōmokoroa.
The last official word on the subject, in September 2019, had suggested a high school would be built “towards the latter part of the decade… closer to 2030”.
That was in a document entitled the National Education Growth Plan, which outlined how the Ōtūmoetai and Ōmokoroa catchment has been struggling with roll growth.
However, in a written response last month to a letter from a resident asking for the build to be accelerated, Mr Hipkins appears to confirm that both a specific tentative date has been set and that it may be as soon as five years earlier than we were led to believe last year.
The Ōtūmoetai catchment, which includes Ōmokoroa, is one of 39 major growth areas in New Zealand highlighted in the plan. In his letter, Mr Hipkins says the Government is continuing to monitor and evaluate planning changes.
“Regional analysis and catchment modelling… is regularly updated and refined as new data becomes available. This includes school roll data, population projections, and large-scale residential and infrastructure developments.
“You will be pleased to know the Government has already announced the purchase of land for both primary and secondary provision in Ōmokoroa. At this time, we have not changed the proposed opening date of 2025 for a new secondary school in Ōmokoroa,” he writes. In last October’s Lizard News we revealed Ōmokoroa had been earmarked for a potential new 500-student primary school in the next few years, and a prospective new secondary school with 1,000 student places.
The Ministry will be considering a vacant site it already owns to assess suitability for schooling, and the potential relocation and expansion of an existing school onto that site.
Both the primary and secondary networks were expected to reach capacity last year. A new senior student block opened at Ōmokoroa Point this year to ease growth pressures on the peninsula. The District Council has projected a 30year quadrupling of the population from 2,500 in 2013 to 10,000 by 2043.