Hinuera School to adopt zoning scheme

Hinuera School has a proud 120-year history as a small to medium-sized rural school that aims to make a difference in the lives of all its community members.

Recently the board of trustees has been working with the Education Ministry to discuss the school’s growing student roll, so planning for the best possible learning environment is made.

The ministry is unable to fund additional classrooms and so the best course of action is to implement an enrolment scheme zone to avoid class sizes becoming bigger and bigger.

The board supports this and believes that the school will best achieve its aims if it remains as an eight-classroom school with a rural-urban flavour, maintaining its family atmosphere and heartland foundation values.

With a zone coming into effect, Principal Dean McDonnell is keen to know prospective parents understand that there are definitely still spaces at the school for families who live outside the zone.

‘‘Sometimes people assume that if they are outside the zone, then they will find it hard to get in,’’ Mr McDonnell said.

‘‘We now have to give priority to students within the zone and to families that are already enrolled at the school but we anticipate that there will still be room for the majority of others.’’

He said the enrolment scheme would allow the school to have more certainty about the number of students arriving.

‘‘With this certainty they could plan for great educational outcomes for them all.

‘‘With all the discussion going on about rising class sizes I think parents will be pleased that we will have some control over the number of new enrolments, therefore avoiding the challenges that sudden influxes of students can cause,’’ Mr McDonnell said.

The Education Ministry has requested that this scheme be in place from July 1, 2012.