Making history: What has Tauranga Girls' College changed its house names to?

Year 12 students Mahnoor Qadri (left) and Annabel Robinson. Photo / File

Tauranga Girls' College is creating history, while holding on to the old.

The school gathered in ceremonial assembly this morning, joined by three of the four house captains from 1958, to announce three new school house names.

Two existing houses, previously named for men, are being renamed and there is one new house.

The houses will be named Whina, Sheppard and Te Auetu, after Dame Whina Cooper, Kate Sheppard, and local woman Auetu Harata Hall.

The school's leader of learning social science Emma Talbot said Toni Heke-Ririnui, from Ngāti Ranginui, worked with the school to share the story of Te Auetu.

Te Auetu was born at Huria Marae in the 1850s and had strong links to the land that Tauranga Girls' College now stands.

She accompanied her mother - Matatu - to Pukehinahina to aid dying soldiers in the wake of the Battle of Gate Pā

Whina Cooper was known for leading the famous 1975 land march from Te Hāpua, in the Far North, to Parliament in Wellington. The march was organised by Māori groups opposed to the further loss of their land.

Sheppard had an instrumental role in making New Zealand the first country to allow women to vote.

Two houses with men's names - from the pre-1958 co-educational Tauranga College era - were renamed after prominent New Zealand-raised writer from the 1800s, Katherine Mansfield, and record-breaking Kiwi aviator Jean Batten.

They were originally named after physicist Lord Ernest Rutherford, and war hero Lord Bernard Freyberg.

Mansfield would stay the yellow house and Batten was now blue, symbolic of the sky in honour of her achievements.

A school competition started this year offering a $500 prize seeking suggestions for new house names.

Birds were also suggested, as were parts of wharenui at marae.

Students and staff voted on the pitches and Year 12 students Mahnoor Qadri and Annabel Robinson's ideas to use inspirational New Zealand women came out on top.

Two of the women chosen for the new houses were Māori because "with the old houses there was no representation", Robinson told the Bay of Plenty Times this week.

Tauranga Girls' College houses 2020:

New:

Whina - Green
Sheppard - Purple
Te Auetu - Red

Continued:

Mansfield - Yellow
Batten - Blue