A new legacy for Linwood
How does a college with falling enrolments and a flagging reputation become the school of choice for its community? Adele Redmond reports on the grassroots project that’s turning Linwood College around.
For months, Linwood College principal Richard ‘‘Dick’’ Edmundson rushed off at the end of the school day to catch parents stopping by the supermarket on their way home.
He and his students dragged two-metre tall banners, emblazoned with pink and purple koru, to farmers’ markets on winter mornings, hopeful the eyecatching design would draw passersby into their project.
Their plan? Linwood College was going to become the school its community wanted it to be.
The initiative did not start with the school, but with local groups given $50,000 by the Ministry of Social Development and told to pursue a ‘‘legacy project’’, something that would have lasting impact in Christchurch’s quakerattled eastern suburbs.
In June 2015, nine community centres from Woolston to Lyttelton gathered to determine how they could improve the long-term wellbeing of an area home to both beneficiaries and millionaires.
‘‘Christchurch had been through a really hard time and empowering people at a grassroots level is just so effective because it percolates up rather than down,’’ Phillipstown Community Centre development worker MaryAnn Bell said of the reasoning behind their chosen campaign. ‘‘When a school is failing it affects all of us.’’
‘‘It was Linda who said ‘how about Linwood College?’’’
Formerly of the Mt Pleasant Community Board, Linda Rutland said the Linwood College Community Partnership Group (LCCPG), which she would later chair, realised their common interest – the local high school – ‘‘wasn’t serving the needs of the community’’.
Although it had been the catchment school for Sumner, Redcliffs and Mt Pleasant since the 1950s, relaxed zoning restrictions, cheaper cars and public transport in the 1980s saw affluent families move away from Linwood College towards higher-decile schools such as Cashmere High.
The school gained a negative reputation, despite its higher-thanaverage academic achievement in the early 2000s, and struggled to position itself as a quality educator in the public’s eyes.
Earthquake-damaged buildings and a government intervention have troubled Linwood College in recent years, with the effects felt in its declining roll: From 1100 year 9 to 13 students in 2010, the school fell to 595 students by 2016, years 7 and 8 included.
Yet when the LCCPG approached Linwood College’s board of trustees late in 2015 with an offer to help, chairman Dave Turnbull said his initial reaction was ‘‘at best neutral’’.
‘‘I was thinking ‘I wonder why [us]’. I was feeling a bit defensive at that point.’’
The partnership group, whose funding was earmarked for use before April 2016, was ‘‘less than thrilled’’, Turnbull said, but he convinced them to wait until Edmundson was appointed principal that October.
He said Edmundson leapt at the idea with open arms, ‘‘literally’’.
‘‘Most people use the word ‘passionate’ very loosely. I would not use it loosely in relation to Dick and I would add another word – compassionate.
‘‘If there’s one key thing that’s going to turn the school around it’s Dick Edmundson.’’
The former Hornby High School principal saw an opportunity in the junction of his arrival, the partnership group’s plan and an upcoming $40 million rebuild to learn what the school’s community valued and apply that to its plans for the future.
Moreover, he felt compelled to address the school’s reputation for the sake of the students who felt its stigma.
While consultation is routine for schools, many create an echo chamber by holding meetings inhouse, reducing the range of families who attend to those at either extreme of an issue.
‘‘When we said ‘we don’t want to just hear the things we want to hear’ we knew that meant going out to the community,’’ Edmundson said.
What followed was a concentrated effort by the school and the LCCPG to start a conversation: Five ‘‘community cafes’’, 12 outreach sessions, surveys, workshops, focus groups, and visits to local shops, including Eastgate Mall, gauged the views of 2000 individuals aged seven to 70 – more people than submitted on the Christchurch City Council’s 2016 annual plan.
Professional consultant Sandra James, who was contracted to work on the Legacy Project, said the depth of engagement was its point of difference.
‘‘These were people in the community, bringing the conversation to the community. It was very humbling.’’
Though all parties were nervous at first, anticipating anger and abuse, they were pleasantly surprised at the level of interest in, and affection towards, Linwood College.
Some families saw the school’s diversity as its strength – ‘‘a global education for a global world’’, one respondent said.
Rutland said that, while some of the old perceptions about the college remained, a new reputation for supporting individual learning styles was growing.
‘‘We had families where one child went to a private school and then the second child went to Linwood College and the parent said ‘I wish I’d sent them both to Linwood.’
‘‘I was so annoyed we didn’t get that person on video.’’
Stephen Crooks, whose daughter Emilia started at Linwood College this year, said his neighbours in Redcliffs rarely heard good stories about the school because so few of them enrolled there.
He chose Linwood so his children would experience a more a diverse community than the one they grew up in.
‘‘Everybody has got to make a call as to what they see is the right decision for their children and here that seems to mean going to any other school.
‘‘As a parent you don’t have a huge involvement with the school; it’s not like primary school. I thought it was a really good idea to try engage the community about what people perceive the college to be.’’
The consultation allowed the school to approach its 2017 rebuild knowing it understood what the community wanted, but locals also expressed their desire for strong leadership, academic excellence and flexible pathways for their children, at school and beyond.
As Edmundson put it, ‘‘what families want for their children is almost universal – to be happy and to do well for themselves’’.
Small changes made so far at the school, such as increased communication with families, more collaborative, online teaching and better student discipline (Sunday detentions included), have already generated results: In one year, Linwood College’s NCEA Level 1 achievement has grown by 50 per cent.
Beyond statistics, Turnbull said he feels an atmospheric change at the school.
‘‘I have been around schools for 40 years and when I walk into schools I can feel their tone. When I walked into Linwood College in 2014 it felt like a hostile environment.
‘‘I walk into the school now and it feels like a welcoming place. The kids have smiles on their faces . . . I get a lot of ‘hello misters’.’’
Parent Agnes Mariner, who participated in a Pacific focus group during the consultation, said she and her children Michael and Vai, a deputy head girl, now feel more comfortable at Linwood after relocating from Auckland’s Mangare College in 2015.
‘‘She’s achieved a lot in the last year and as a parent I am so proud of her and Michael. I know they are very lucky to be there and doing well.
‘‘I’m looking forward to the building [plan] and what’s going to come out of it. I will be remaining in Christchurch for the next 10 years so I can see it happen.’’
Mariner has since become involved in Linwood College’s fundraising group for Polyfest 2017, while the LCCPG seeks sponsorships and the school’s board work to establish an alumni association.
Edmundson called the consultation a ‘‘masterstroke’’ but cautioned there was much work to do before Linwood became the school of choice in south-east Christchurch.
‘‘One lady said ‘I don’t want to feel I have to sit in the car for an hour to school each way. I can do that in Auckland’.
‘‘You don’t change that perception with a couple of 10-minute speeches, or by standing outside supermarkets.
‘‘We’ll know we’ve succeeded if we can create a school which physically expresses the values and dreams of our families.’’
‘‘Most people use the word ‘passionate’ very loosely. I would not use it loosely in relation to Dick and I would add another word – compassionate.’’ Dave Turnbull