HS has student-centred future

For 70 years now, Waitara High School has been educating the youth of Taranaki’s river town, shaping the destinies of young men and women through eras of peace and war, prejudice and reconciliation, strife and prosperity.

Like any school, it is a reflection of its past as much as its present, and now WHS prepares to enter the future.

Daryl Warburton has been principal of the school now for two terms; and as the third begins, so starts a new era for this proud and venerable institution.

‘‘My approach is very student-centred,’’ says Daryl. ‘‘I think the most obvious change I have made is that we as a school are now placing students at the centre of many key decisions.’’

The trend towards ‘student democracy’ in modern teaching will be familiar to many readers of Waitara Focus, with Manukorihi Intermediate being another Waitara school that gives its pupils a stake and an input in their own education and how that education is delivered.

One of the first and most obvious fruits of this new approach is the state-of-the-art basketball hoops purchased for the school’s quadrangle.

‘‘The quad as it is now is a bit of a wasteland … the students asked if they could have a basketball hoop or hoops somewhere on the grounds, and I think they were imagining a couple of basic ones from The Warehouse or whatever. Instead, we ordered the two glass-backed adjustable hoops from the US. They have proved incredibly popular, not just with the students, but also with the community as a whole.

‘‘It’s just an example of how we are engaging the students in how our resources are spent and what we should prioritise – what they’re interested in, what they wish to learn about – and so far it has been a great success.’’

But this is just the start. A huge and impressive redesign of the school is on the cards, tied in to some extent to the new Clifton Sports Complex swiftly coming together on the other side of Princess Street.

‘‘We’re a key stakeholder in the development of the Complex … we will be using many of the facilities during the day.

‘‘One of the things we don’t currently have is a cafe on site. Starting next term, we will be building a whole new Food Technology room.’’

Part of the school’s existing canteen will become a commercial kitchen, with the view to having the students eventually running the canteen itself.

‘‘They won’t just be working in there, they will be setting budgets, determining who’s staffing it, liaising with contractors and suppliers. The idea is when the pupils go out into the workforce, they will have what employers most want – experience in the sector, as real and in-depth as any nonschool experience would be.’’

Revamps to the quadrangle and library are also in the offing, with a view towards creating a grassed green space in the former, and an arts centre in the latter.

The existing library will move spatially and with the times, shifting to the front of the school and becoming more focused on online learning.

Buildings surplus to requirements will be removed, with the space freed up developed into parkland.

The end goal?

‘‘Ideally, I would like to see our campus open from 8 to 8 every day, a hub which the students and community can access for sports, arts, using the free WiFi, and what have you.’’

A busy man, Daryl was then on his way to his next piece of business … a human symbol, perhaps, of the forward progress he is a large part of at grand old Waitara High; now accelerating into the fast-paced, multi-use world of today.