Auckland secondary schools face enrolment pressure due to post-pandemic immigration and population growth. Photo / Hannah Peters via Getty Images
By Duoya Lu of RNZ
A rising number of Auckland’s leading secondary schools are being overwhelmed by enrolment demand due to a post-pandemic spike in immigration that has fuelled population growth.
The principals of Rangitoto College and Mount Albert Grammar School say rising demand is forcing them to turn away out-of-zone students, even those with siblings already enrolled.
Enrolment applications for 2026 are set to open at many secondary schools in Auckland in June and July.
Rangitoto College on Auckland’s North Shore will no longer accept out-of-zone students from next year, citing growing enrolment pressure and limited classroom space.
The country’s largest secondary school said its current roll of 4105 students had pushed it to absolute capacity.
While siblings of enrolled students who lived out of zone had been accommodated in 2025, the school said continued growth made this no longer feasible.
Rangitoto College is not alone.
Mount Albert Grammar School - Auckland’s second-largest secondary school, with approximately 3600 students - has also signalled it is likely to stop accepting out-of-zone students next year, including siblings of current students.
“We’ve signalled for a number of years now that we are heading towards having no out-of-zone enrolments,” principal Patrick Drumm said.
Drumm said enrollment growth flatlined somewhat during the pandemic, which allowed the school to continue accommodating some out-of-zone students through a ballot system.
However, rising demand has forced the school to restrict those places to siblings of current students only in recent years.
“So, it’s priority for students in the ballot,” he said. “But it’s looking like that may also not be possible next year.”
Drumm said a sharp rise in immigration, as well as families relocating from other parts of New Zealand, had intensified enrolment pressure across Auckland’s secondary schools.
Net migration in New Zealand most recently peaked in the year ending October 2023, with a gain of almost 130,000, according to Stats NZ.
The annual gains have since decreased to less than 30,000 in the year to March, according to the latest data from Stats NZ.
He expected in-zone enrolments to remain strong next year, further straining capacity.
“Normally, we could judge [enrolment numbers] just by speaking with our local intermediate schools,” Drumm said. “They’d tell us the sort of numbers coming through. But, on top of that, we’ve had strong immigration growth in New Zealand.
“Those young people need to go to school. A lot of them are moving into our area, and that’s certainly caught us out a little bit.”
Vaughan Couillault, former president of the Secondary Principals’ Association and principal of Papatoetoe High School, said his school had also experienced significant enrolment pressure over the past two years, and now only accepted out-of-zone students who were siblings of current pupils.
“We’ve gone from 1300 to 1800 students in two years,” he said. “We’ve increased by 500 students, which is significant and puts quite a lot of pressure on infrastructure.
“We’ve significantly reduced the number of out-of-zone students we can accept, because we’re required to take in-zone students. That’s the whole point of zoning - to give people an entitlement to go to their local school.”
Couillault said soaring immigration and rapid property development were key factors that had driven increased demand for school placements in several Auckland suburbs.
“There doesn’t seem to be a clear line of sight between immigration - people coming across the border - and the number of kids arriving with them,” he said. “And those people need somewhere to live.
“In communities like mine, around my school, there are a number of ‘one house comes down, six go up in its place’.
“Those quarter-acre or eighth-acre sections, which my community was full of, are being knocked down and replaced with two-up, one-down apartments.”
Couillault said families should prioritise enrolling their children in local schools.
“I don’t actually see it as a big drama,” he said. “All of those people who are out of zone for my school are in zone for another school down the road.
“They’re entitled to go to their local school. They’re not missing out on anything. We have a world-class education system, and going to your local school is fine.”
Some principals also raised concern about potential enrolment fraud as pressure on school placements continued to increase.
At Auckland’s Macleans College, nine students were reportedly removed last year after it was discovered they had been fraudulently enrolled.
Steven Hargreaves, principal of Macleans College, said the school made the decision three years ago to accept only out-of-zone students who were siblings of current students.
“We experienced a surge in enrolments after Covid,” he said. “We had to make a decision quite quickly - one we didn’t want to make - and that was not to accept enrolments from past siblings and children of past students.
“It was a difficult decision, but our roll growth was so fast that we had to not accept enrolments from those categories.”
Hargreaves said enrolment fraud was likely to persist as pressure on the school roll continued to mount.
“We have a lot of families who want to get into Macleans,” he said. “But the Macleans zone is expensive.
“We know we’ll have to investigate suspicious enrolments in future. And, sadly, we’ll probably have to annul those enrolments in future as well.
“Unfortunately, the risk of fraud might go up as it becomes more difficult to enrol,” he said.
Hargreaves said the school required families to provide proof of address and sign a statutory declaration confirming they lived within the school zone in an effort to reduce enrolment fraud.
However, he said the key to addressing enrolment pressure in the long term was expanding school campuses and increasing capacity.
He said the school board had funded nine new classrooms to accommodate rapid roll growth, but said more space would be needed.
“We’re just starting the process of talking to the Ministry of Education to build the classrooms we are entitled to,” he said. “We’re about 3000 [students] now, and there are lots of schools about our size.
“What we can do is knock down a one-storey building and replace it with a two- or three-storey building. That will be what happens on our campus in future.”
Drumm said Mount Albert Grammar School also required families to sign a statutory declaration and provide three separate documents as proof of residence within the school zone.
“It’s just not practical for us to go door-knocking or visit houses,” he said. “We just cannot afford, or do not get funded to have any high-level investigative approaches across the whole student population. It’s just too big.”
Drumm agreed more needed to be done to address the mounting pressure on schools, including the construction of additional classrooms - and potentially new schools - particularly in central Auckland, where immigrant populations were densest.
He also highlighted the need for broader curriculum and assessment reform across New Zealand’s education system to build public confidence in the quality of local schools.
“Immigrant families are very educationally savvy,” he said. “Their sons and daughters have been part of rigorous education and qualification systems overseas.
“I suppose families want to travel to another school because they’re not confident that they can get the qualification and the quality of education that they need out of [their local] school.
“That’s something we need to respond to. Immigration has been part of New Zealand’s story, and we’ve got to ensure our students can compete internationally.
“We’re going to offer something which really suits what our community wants.”
Sean Teddy, leader of operations and integration at the Ministry of Education, said several regions nationwide faced significant enrolment pressure.
High-growth school catchment areas included Ormiston, Mission Heights, Papakura, Rosehill, Drury, Massey, Hobsonville and Kaipara in Auckland; Papamoa, Piako and Hamilton West in Bay of Plenty and Waikato; and Rolleston, Halswell and the Wakatipu Basin in Canterbury and Otago-Southland.
Teddy said the ministry was working with schools experiencing roll pressure to determine the most appropriate responses, including non-property solutions such as introducing new enrolment schemes or amending existing zone boundaries.
“In some cases, we may need to provide roll growth classrooms at local schools to meet growth and demand,” Teddy said. “Where growth in an area is anticipated to be continuous, sustained and sufficient to sustain another school, and there is a deficit in the ability of the existing schooling network to accommodate the projected growth, then a new school is required.”
Teddy said enrolment schemes were designed to prevent overcrowding at schools, making sure local students were able to attend schools in their area.
Schools can accept out-of-zone enrolments if they have accepted all in-zone students and have available capacity.
Schools that do not possess a dedicated enrolment scheme are obliged to accept all students seeking enrolment.
-RNZ
Emergency services were called to the scene about 8.20pm.