Catholic education in big demand

By JULIET ROWAN and STUART DYE

The first new Catholic high school to be built in Auckland in 30 years is to be officially opened this weekend.

Demand for places at the new school in East Auckland showed no sign of slowing in the week leading up to its official opening by the Prime Minister on Sunday.

Paul Daley, principal of the co-educational Sancta Maria College in Botany South, said keen interest from parents at an information evening on Wednesday suggested competition for places would increase next year.

In January, the school was forced to turn away 35 students after demand exceeded the 315 places available in the 95 per cent Catholic roll.

Mr Daley said rising numbers of parents favoured a religious education. "There's a growing desire in the community to have children educated at a school where Christian values can be openly talked about and integrated into the life of the school."

Sancta Maria is one of only two co-educational Catholic schools in Auckland and is the first Catholic high school to open in the city in 30 years.

Prime Minister Helen Clark and the Catholic Bishop of Auckland, Patrick Dunn, will be among the dignitaries attending Sunday's two-hour official opening.

Females make up 55 per cent of the school's roll. The number of non-Catholic students is just under the school's 5 per cent threshold of "non-preference" students.

Three periods a week are dedicated to religious education, while assemblies and other school activities tend to have a religious theme.

Classes are offered in Years 7 to 9.

Next year, 450 places will be available to students in Years 7 to 10, and eventually the school will take students up to Year 13.

Sancta Maria is New Zealand's tenth new Catholic school in the past nine years. The eleventh, Stella Maris School in Silverdale, is due to open early next year.

The rise in student numbers at most of the country's 324 church schools has been such that some parents are enrolling their children at birth in a bid to have them accepted.

The Catholic Education Office says most of the 240 schools it represents are either full or very close to it.

Parents prefer a religious or philosophical dimension, or want some aspects of a private education without paying private school fees.

Office chief executive Brother Pat Lynch believes the growth is part of a spiritual revival.

Historic links

* Sancta Maria College is named after the boat used by the first Catholic Bishop of New Zealand, Jean Pompallier, in the 1850s and 1860s. The bishop often moored his boat in the Howick-Pakuranga area close to where the college now stands.

* An outdoor sculpture at the school's entrance continues the Pompallier link. The sculpture uses eight wooden mooring piles from the original Auckland Harbour wharf that were unearthed during the building of Britomart. The Sancta Maria regularly pulled up at that wharf.