A SENSE OF HOPE
At the edge of the city and the margins of society, a school and its students are fighting back. Kirsty Johnston reports in the first of a three-part series.
At the edge of the city and the margins of society, a school and its students are fighting back. Papakura High School has a falling roll, and as far as results go, it’s among the worst schools in the country. The buildings are under- maintained and
morale is low. Staff and students fear closure. Its community faces huge challenges — homelessness, low incomes, limited education and a high crime rate. But there is hope. Some of the students are stars, dedicated to
building a future for themselves and inspiring others. A charismatic new headmaster has big plans for turning things around. Under The Bridge is the story of a year inside their world, made as Herald journalists spent 12 months following three young people and their principal to discover what life is really like at a struggling school — and what students need to succeed. Ghost School: Part one of Under The Bridge, a Herald investigation
She reads through the message one last time, forefinger hovering over the “post” button. Lying beside her on the bed, her younger sister nods in agreement, ready.
The 17-year-old exhales, and taps the screen. She watches as the loading bar scrolls briefly, and then, the status update goes live.
“All u muppets posting about fighting at school n all that srlsy need to reevaluate why you even go to school! I don’t think any of u realise how much ur actions affect not only our schools rep but ur character. We already see enough violence in our streets and probably at home, so why do u get off by promoting more of it?! None of this crap will be tolerated at our school anymore.”
It is the second week of the 2016 school year, and stiflingly hot. At Papakura High School, on the southern fringes of Auckland’s Super City, a sense of malaise accompanies the sticky summer heat. By now most of the students have heard the gossip or read the papers, or watched in vain as younger siblings are enrolled somewhere else.
“There is fear,” says Papakura High’s head girl, Wendy Savieti. She wrote the Facebook post on a borrowed iPad as a message to the junior students, pleading for calm after a series of brawls. “It is rumoured that our school is going to be shut down. I don’t know why, I think our school is great.”
The rumours have been circulating since the previous year, after the Ministry of Education announced a planned rebuild of Papakura High would be put on hold.
It was the latest blow for a school that was already deep in a spiral of decline, dogged by a “rough” reputation and a low decile, poor achievement and terrible staff morale. Earlier in 2015, the principal had quit, and a statutory manager had been appointed to help the flailing board.
By then some families had already pulled their children out of Papakura High, or bypassed it altogether for places with fewer “troubled” kids. For them, the school’s demise meant little, but for kids like Wendy, it felt like the end of the world.
“You can tell me this is school but it’s a home for me,” she said. “I love this place. I want people to believe that our school is amazing. I want it to carry on.”
Wendy always knew she would go to “Kura”. She grew up just around the corner, with her parents and two younger siblings on Bates St. They live in a three-bedroom rental with an immaculate lawn and not quite enough space inside, meaning Wendy and her 13-year-old sister Samantha share a room — and a bed. Another brother stays a few houses away with her grandmother, where he has lived since he was a baby.
Their street is untouched by the rampant gentrification sweeping the rest of the city, so that it still has the feel of small-town New Zealand in the 1970s — single-storey houses, distressed picket fences, wide footpaths and children playing on the road. Like the rest of the neighbourhood, it also bears the hallmarks of poverty — graffiti on fences, shoes strung over power lines, houses with overgrown lawns and boarded-up windows.
Papakura East is one of the poorest suburbs in the country, with Auckland’s highest rate of welfare dependency, and where the average household income hovers just above $46,000. It also has a reputation for drugs and crime. But to Wendy, that doesn’t matter. To her, the neighbourhood is homely and warm, a place where people look out for each other.
“There are bad things that happen in here but that’s the reality of any place,” she says.
Wendy is half Tongan, half Cook Island, with a mass of dark hair, high cheekbones and a tiny gold stud in her nose. Strong-willed and charismatic, she is a natural leader and determined to make a difference in the world. For now, that means changing perceptions about Papakura High and the students who go there, before the community abandons it for good.
“I’m fully invested in our school,” she says. “And that’s okay with me, my goals can come later. This is something I need to do now.”
Papakura High began its descent into difficulty about 10 years ago. From a healthy peak of 1300 students, the school roll slid to 1000, then 800.
Across the country, other low-decile schools were suffering the same trend. Backed by the government’s open policy on school choice, parents no longer felt tied to their local schools and started to “choose up”. In Auckland, and Wellington, and Christchurch, they took their kids out of schools with lots of poor students, to high-profile colleges with better reputations.
As a result, the high-decile schools grew and grew. In Auckland the biggest winners — Mt Albert Grammar, Macleans College, Western Springs — saw their rolls almost double in size. Meanwhile, the low decile schools haemorrhaged numbers. At Edgewater College in the city’s east, the student muster halved in a decade. Kelston Girls lost 400 from its roll, Glenfield College 600.
But almost no other school felt the impact of the exodus as severely as Papakura High. By 2016, the roll dwindled below the 600 mark. Teachers were laid off and classrooms were closed. For the Year
I love this place. I want people to believe that our school is amazing. I want it to carry on. Head girl Wendy Savieti
The young people have a really heartwarming sense of genuineness. What you see is what you get. John Rohs, principal
13 cohort, down to 70 students, the school suddenly felt too big.
“When I first started. I would walk through the gates everyday and it was basically packed,” says Robert Downes, 17. “At lunchtimes . . . it was packed and now . . . you could yell and you’d hear yourself echoing.”
This lunchtime in late summer most of the students are inside preparing for Polyfest, an annual cultural competition held mid-March. Robert stands at the head of the oaklined avenue that leads past the marae, to the cluster of 1950s wooden classrooms at the centre of the school. He is on gate duty, one of his jobs as a newly-anointed school leader.
Robert wears his prefect badge with pride, a token of his achievements so far, and a reminder to stay on track. Part Maori, part Samoan, Robert is a self-described “cuddly koala” with a wicked giggle, a prop’s build, and a clear singing voice. But he has a tough side too.
In his junior years, Robert was almost expelled for fighting. He even considered joining a gang, but decided a future on the street wasn’t for him, and was allowed to stay at school. He’s now fiercely loyal to Papakura and, like Wendy, can’t understand its negative reputation.
“It’s stink,” Robert says. “What did we do to deserve that? It’s just that perspective, hitting us hard.”
Despite Robert’s current successes, his early bad behaviour has put his parents off Papakura High. Next year his younger brother will instead go to Rosehill College, a decile 6 school with a more middle class roll on the other side of town. Robert is disappointed, and hopeful his parents have a change of heart.
“I would have stuck up for him,” he says. “But my parents have that image of if my brother comes here he will do the same, disobey rules. Fighting and that.”
Rosehill is the main competition to Papakura High, and the two have a fierce rivalry. Papakura used to be the larger school, but during the late 1990s Rosehill began to essentially “poach” students from Papakura’s roll, taking on talented kids from out- of-zone to boost numbers.
Consequently, Rosehill gained extra funding and new buildings, and a reputation as the “better” school. Papakura High, meanwhile, was left with a higher concentration of students from poor backgrounds, who brought with them added social and educational problems. While Rosehill is now so popular it only takes a limited number of students from outside its zone each year, Papakura, a decile 1, is seen by many as a “last resort”.
Jayden Schell, 17, had his heart set on Rosehill. As a noisy, nerdy Pakeha kid with a chunky build, Jayden was a magnet for bullies at primary school. Rosehill was going to be a new start. When enrolment time came, however, he found he was out of zone.
“I thought I would automatically get in,” he says. “But that’s not the case . . . I’m on the wrong side of the train tracks. It’s not really fair.”
Part of Jayden’s initial apprehension towards Papakura stemmed from his ethnicity. The middle class exodus from poor areas has not only left low-decile schools smaller, but almost totally free of Pakeha students. By 2015, only 2.3 per cent of students at decile 1 schools in Auckland were white, compared to 70 per cent at decile 10 schools.
While in some areas, such as Mangere, the statistics accurately reflect their community, in Papakura they do not. Europeans make up 60 per cent of the district but only 9 per cent of the school, with just 50 Pakeha pupils enrolled. Jayden, as part of the minority, felt out of his depth.
“It’s kind of like I didn’t have a place there. I didn’t want to go to school. I didn’t have any friends,” he says.
The bullying, when it inevitably happened, lasted more than two years. It was occasionally for his skin colour, but also for his weight, and his tendency to play the class clown. As things have improved for him as he’s aged, Jayden has become more focused on trying to prevent the same thing happening to anyone else.
Polyfest dawns in late March, a melee of leis and woven flax and floral prints. The school’s new principal John Rohs arrives in sandals and a tupenu, a traditional wrap skirt worn on formal occasions in the Pacific Islands.
Rohs, a 60-year-old white man, causes the students to stop and stare. Who is this palangi dressed like their uncles for church on Sunday?
It is not the only time the teenagers have been surprised by the new recruit. At assemblies he uses Te Reo Maori, Samoan and Tongan, with help from teachers who are native speakers. He once bought KFC for a group of hungry boys after a game of volleyball. And at a leaders’ event before the year began, Rohs — pronounced Ross — waited quietly until the end before introducing himself to the kids.
“Everyone was like, ‘this guy’s different’,” Jayden says. “He didn’t . . . push himself out there. He was humble. It was cool.”
Rohs has come from Aranui High, a co-educational decile 2 in the earthquake-ravaged eastern suburbs of Christchurch. He was recruited under a scheme that sees effective principals paid extra to take on struggling schools, and is tasked with turning Papakura around.
He arrived in January 2016, shortly after the Education Review Office released its damning report outlining the school’s poor performance. The reviewers slammed the school for its abysmal achievement, high rates of dropout, disproportionate use of suspension, weak curriculum and poor leadership. Far from being deterred, Rohs was attracted by the challenge, wanting a last project before retirement.
“The thing I enjoy the most about low decile schools is that I have the opportunity to really make a difference to lives of the young people here,” he says. “The other thing is that the young people have a really heartwarming sense of genuineness. What you see is what you get.”
Rohs is delighted by Polyfest, watching the Tongan group, the Samoan students, and then the kapa haka. Afterwards he heads around the back of the stage to congratulate the performers and waits in line to give each one a hongi, pleased to see their families are there — including Robert’s whanau, who have come to watch for the first time.
“Before I hopped on the stage I was crying,” Robert says. “I don’t know why, I was really emotional. I put all my anger on that stage. My dad doesn’t usually come but seeing my brother, my sister and my uncle — and all the girls outside — it was a bonus.”
By now, the prefects have formed their goals for the year: To change the perspective in the community; to lift the school spirit; and to set a standard. They feel certain their new principal is the right person to help them.
“At first he kind of looks stuck up because he’s got a suit on,” Wendy says. “But most principals that start here start with being strict and new rules, and instead Mr Rohs has been trying to build relationships with us. We even had a dinner with our parents and him. It makes us feel important. No one has ever asked to meet our parents that way before.”
Rohs believes a big issue for the school is whanau engagement. After just a few weeks he’s already noticed that parents rarely appear on campus. He is determined to get families involved, to develop a positive culture so that students are more settled, and ready to work as soon as they get to school.
When the previous year’s pass rates are made public at the end of Term 1, it only fuels Rohs’ sense of urgency. The marks are some of the lowest in the country, down notably from 2014. Level 3 is the worst, with a success rate of just 8 per cent. Even the students are shocked.
“It’s pretty disappointing. I couldn’t imagine how the teachers felt,” Robert says. “Hopefully things will be better this year.”
Gaining a qualification can be lifechanging for these kids. Research has shown leaving school without NCEA means a lower chance of well-paid work; and a higher likelihood of a stint on welfare, or a teenage pregnancy. It also increases the risk of doing time in jail.
In Papakura East, 12 per cent of boys have a criminal record by the time they hit adulthood, more than twice that of the rest of the country.
But the students don’t need statistics to know how important it is to pass. They’ve watched over four years as their peers have left school without qualifications, for minimum wage jobs, to go on a benefit or to join gangs. Sometimes, in the main street, they see a boy from their year who dropped out in Year 12. He is homeless, sleeping rough, addicted to drugs.