NZ’s crowded schools
It’s a tale of two nations: As country schools struggle for pupils, our city schools are bursting at the seams. Report by Jessica Long and Harrison Christian.
Students stream through into Darfield College’s library research lab, as principal James Morris holds the sliding door open. They’re using it as a classroom, he says. The teachers’ meeting room, too, is now used for language classes. They’re ‘‘squeezing in classes’’ wherever they can.
Classes and teachers move around a lot; shared spaces wind up as classrooms. Acknowledging the Canterbury high school was short of eight teaching spaces last year, the Ministry of Education has begun a project to provide them.
Morris, who chairs the New Zealand Secondary Principals’ Council, says the roll has grown from 650 to 850 since the Canterbury earthquakes, as the small communities on the outskirts of Christchurch grew to become towns.
Progress getting new classrooms is slow. ‘‘There is a lag between the need,’’ says Morris, ‘‘and triggering the thresholds to get things moving.’’
In some parts of provincial New Zealand, schools are struggling for pupils. Indeed, 1627 of the country’s 2030 schools have spare space, according to the ministry.
But at our big secondary and primary schools in the cities and on their fringes, it’s a different story. Kids in the big cities are more likely to be in crowded schools that are operating over capacity.
About one in five schools (403) were struggling at more than 100 per cent of their ‘‘government-provided’’ capacity in 2017.
That was true of almost a quarter of Auckland schools (104 out of 425). And that’s before the arrival of 60,000 more children by 2030.
Waikato (54), Canterbury (49) and Wellington (45) all have large numbers of over-capacity schools, too.
Data released by the ministry under the Official Information Act shows the most crowded school was Auckland’s Mt Albert Grammar. Close behind were Auckland primaries Campbells Bay and
A new classroom is not necessarily the first response to roll growth. Katrina Casey, Ministry of Education
Sunnyvale, Te Akau ki Papamoa primary in Tauranga, and Darfield.
Between them, those five schools were short 26 teaching spaces last year, the ministry admits.
The need for more classroom space at Darfield has been evident for a while, Morris says – the area’s population is booming.
But the bureaucratic response of planning and permission ‘‘seems to take a really long time’’.
Meanwhile, the baby boom waits for no one.
Perhaps it was a growing economy. Undoubtedly it was an increase in Gen Ys reaching reproductive age. But between 2002 to 2010, an extra 50,000 Kiwi kids were born above what might have been expected.
Dr Natalie Jackson, the former demography professor at Massey University, now advises on population trends for education and health providers. She says the baby blip has now dropped off, but the extra kids are still working their way through our schools.
First they hit the early childhood centres, which were crying for help 10 years ago, Jackson says. ‘‘Then we heard how schools were facing a tidal wave of new entrants.’’
Now the ‘‘birth wave’’ is eight to 16 years old and working through the intermediates and secondary schools.
The ministry is advising some of the last remaining town and city schools without enrolment zones to set them in place.
It will be made increasingly difficult for parents to bus kids across town to the secondary schools of their choice; there simply isn’t capacity.
Enrolment zones are perceived as constraining parent choice, but Education Minister Chris Hipkins says they are an important tool to help manage roll growth.
‘‘Sometimes, schools take on too many students from outside their zones and end up with an over-capacity,’’ he explains. ‘‘The ministry works with school boards of trustees to help them manage situations such as these.’’
Critically, for parents considering sending their child to an in-demand school on the other side of town, it’s worth noting schools don’t get property funding to provide classrooms for those extra out-of-zone pupils.
It’s 3pm on Auckland’s North Shore. A torrent of kids in aqua-blue uniforms spills out onto Aberdeen Rd. Parents vie for parking spaces, or arrive on foot to walk their children home.
This is the 930-pupil Campbells Bay School, which the ministry says was the country’s most over-capacity primary school last year. Eleven prefab classes encroach on its field space.
Katrina Casey, the ministry’s deputy secretary for school support, says it works closely with schools to manage and monitor nationwide capacities. Teacher numbers can be addressed quickly: The schools are told in September the minimum number of staff they will receive funds for.
Physical space is more challenging: If a school lacks classroom space the ministry assesses how it uses its existing property, how it manages enrolments and how many out-of-zone students are enrolled. ‘‘A new classroom is not necessarily the first response to roll growth,’’ Casey says.
Campbells Bay principal John McGowan insists the school isn’t overcrowded at all.
‘‘Every class is in an appropriately designated teaching space,’’ he says. ‘‘There is no suggestion that we’re using the hall or the library or the music room, or any other additional space.’’
However, more and more of the school field is being filled with prefabs. Six temporary classrooms were being brought in this term.
McGowan’s real challenge is getting permanent classrooms built.
The roll is expected to reach 1020 before the year’s end.
‘‘There has to be a limit,’’ McGowan concedes. ‘‘What that is at the moment we don’t know, but I suspect we’ll know when we get there.’’
Patrick Drumm walks to school each day, along Albert Ave to the grand, cream building that has welcomed students, teachers and visitors since the 1920s.
The Mt Albert Grammar headmaster wants other teachers to be able to do the same, but they can’t even afford to live in the zone. That’s why he’s taken action, converting a $3.4 million residence that was intended to be a girls’ boarding house into belowmarket-price rental accommodation for 10 teachers.
The school’s population has swelled to 3006, and 180 staff; it has 10 fewer classrooms than it needs.
Around the country, the overcrowding is causing stress for teachers who have to pack up their equipment at the end of one class and drag it to the next classroom.
Drumm’s voice joined the collective sound of other principals in calling for significant, creative solutions to cut through the red tape at a policy level.
‘‘There’s a growing unease at the lack of action addressing these issues,’’ he says, ‘‘which is why we’re taking this into our own hands.’’
At a swanky Pullman Hotel luncheon with the Auckland Chamber of Commerce on Friday, Finance Minister Grant Robertson promised his first Budget would include funding to help schools.
His colleague Hipkins admits schools have suffered.
It is relatively rare that schools are forced to turn libraries and halls into classrooms, he says, but it is still unacceptable.
‘‘We clearly need to do better.’’