School rolls boosted by Hawke's Bay's booming housing market

hbt043158-01.JPG New Principal of Haumoana Primary School Marty Hantz. Rep - Pic By Sarah Bicknell Hawkes Bay Today - NAPIER 28/10/04 NEWS

Hawke's Bay's thriving housing market is injecting new blood to the region, something that is also benefiting the region's primary schools, with hundreds of extra pupils bumping up school rolls.

Waipukurau Primary School principal Tim Hocquard said the school had benefited from an increase in the number of people moving into the area.

"In the last 12 to 18 months we have seen a significant increase in the school roll and we have got more people coming from outside of Central Hawke's Bay.

"I think people up in Hawke's Bay are riding the property wave and selling their houses to Aucklanders and then moving down here generally. But we have also had families from Auckland, Hamilton and people from down south too."

It was "great news" for the school as a whole, he said.

Taradale Primary School in Napier experienced a similar boost but principal Marty Hantz said that had also raised other issues.

"We have had a steady increase of between 12 to 15 learners each year for the last five or six years, and all of whom have moved into zone.

"This has meant that we start the year now on the same roll that our zone is supposedly capped at. With a real focus on both quality learning and small class sizes it has meant that we very rarely are able to take out-of-zone enrolments in any area other than Year 0-1, and has left us very short of classrooms.

"Over the past two or three years we have had to house our fourth Year 0-1 intake in areas that don't always make for the most conducive learning spaces - luckily we are quite innovative in this regard so for us shared spaces work well due to strong teacher and learner collaboration."

New families had arrived from a variety of areas with the majority coming from much larger cities.

"The benefits that we do notice are in fact that these families arrive with a real desire to enjoy the Hawke's Bay lifestyle, are often very engaged in our school and this has added strength to the already strong support that teachers receive and to our very active PTA and board of trustees."

Havelock North Primary School principal Nick Reed said the school's roll had increased steadily over the past few years.

"In March 2015 we had 472 students compared to today's 561. Much of this growth has come from the Auckland market, sprinkled with a number from overseas."

He expected the roll to plateau over the next few years.

"There are obvious benefits to an increased role, especially from a funding perspective. However, this needs to be balanced out with consideration given to what is best for our kids, especially around infrastructure and ensuring we keep our personalised family flavour."

Taradale High School principal Stephen Hensman said the issue was one also being dealt with at secondary level.

"We have experienced roll growth in the last 12 months.

"It is incremental growth, so 60 new students were enrolled in 2017 from mid-February to early term 4, so most of those were generated by families moving into our school zone from other parts of New Zealand and overseas."