Wesley College, in Pukekohe, was established in 1844 and is New Zealand's oldest registered secondary school.
The Education Review Office has hit back at Wesley College’s principal, saying it will make no apologies for ordering its hostel closed as it “is not a safe place for students”.
The Ministry of Education made the order urgently this month after serious incidents related to student safety.
It followed an Education Review Office (ERO) report that recommended the suspension of Wesley’s licence.
It was revealed today that a violent incident involving more than 30 senior boarders at the college prompted the drastic recommendation.
While the school “fully acknowledged” historical failures, Wesley College principal Brian Evans told the Herald that over the past few years, the school had found the stance of ERO staff to be “deeply disrespectful” of the students they interviewed, claiming they were lying and covering up.
He claimed students had disclosed after several ERO visits that they felt the ERO staff were trying to put words in their mouths and badgered them about whether they felt safe at the school.
“ERO’s approach appeared to be dismissive of the student voice. Students said they felt pressured to provide negative answers. That totally undermines our efforts to nurture a culture where students feel safe and empowered to speak out.”
However, ERO deputy chief executive for review and improvement services Shelley Booysen has hit back, saying it “strongly refutes” the claims made by Evans about the evaluation, and that ERO would not apologise for protecting the safety of students.
“This school has a long history of abuse,” Booysen said.
“We acknowledge that ERO visits may at times be unsettling for staff and students, but we make no apology for ensuring that student welfare is not only prioritised but consistently protected.”
ERO actively seeks the perspectives of students during hostel reviews, Booysen said.
“ERO maintains a comprehensive quality assurance process for all reviews, and we can confirm that this review meets all requirements.”
The ERO progress report, released by the school today, said a July 2025 monitoring visit revealed a further serious incident of bullying and assault at the college’s hostel.
During the July progress meeting, ERO was informed that since its previous visit, another significant bullying incident had occurred at the hostel.
“On this occasion, more than 30 senior students left their hostel building at night, entered a junior building, and a small group of senior boys either participated in or observed the bullying and assault of junior students,” the report read.
Booysen said the Wesley College hostel is not a safe place for students.
“We have identified significant issues, including weak supervisory systems and a troubling culture of peer-on-peer abuse.
“ERO has undertaken several reviews into the hostel provision at the school over the past few years, and made strong recommendations relating to hostel governance and leadership, health and safety, complaints procedures, and our concerns about the overall quality of care for boarders.”
Booysen said while the college and the Wesley Trust Board made many commitments in response, ERO’s concern continued.
Evans said the ERO report referred to historical and recent events, but offered no clarity on which issues were ongoing and which had been “long-since addressed”.
He said the school “fully acknowledged” historical failures, particularly abuse and negative traditions identified by previous reviews and the Royal Commission.
“However, conflation of timelines risks misleading both the public and our school community about the scope and persistence of challenges. Our safeguarding programme aims to be gold standard and one that we are confident is working well. No longer do we have a culture of silence in the school.”
When this report was written, he said the school had experienced one incident this year that involved students in possession of alcohol.
“We have had one incident that involved students in possession of cannabis. We certainly don’t condone these students’ behaviour, but you would be hard pressed to find a school in New Zealand that doesn’t have low-level issues such as these.”
He said the school’s current gold-standard safeguarding programme and systematic improvements in day-to-day supervision, facilities and student reporting mechanisms are vastly understated in the report.
“Significant investments have resulted in demonstrably safer and more transparent hostel environments, yet these advances are barely foregrounded in recent reporting.”
Evans was also confident the school had broken down its former “culture of silence” and its anonymous reporting systems were effective.
He said incident reporting indicated there was trust in the system, rather than ongoing dysfunction.
“We believe that ERO’s continued scepticism towards the authenticity of student voice is at odds with this real transformation and is, in particular, hugely disrespectful to young Māori and Pasifika students.
“Wesley College had seen significant improvements to NCEA achievement and student wellbeing,” he said.
“NCEA Levels 2 and 3 achievements are up, and chronic absenteeism down. Students report increased engagement in learning and feel more positive about school culture than in the past.
“The trust board decided to close hostels from the end of 2025 to accelerate ongoing transformation. This reflects a desire for enduring cultural, structural and practice change, not band-aid fixes or surface compliance. We want to reopen the hostels as a national exemplar with state-of-the-art environments – safe, inclusive and wholly values-based.”
Wesley’s trust board had earlier acknowledged “ongoing concerns about student safety and hostel culture” and last month said it would close them at the end of the term.
After the Ministry of Education moved to suspend Wesley’s hostel licence, the trust board urgently met with education officials last week in an effort to keep the dorms open until the end of the year. It then filed an appeal in the Auckland District Court against the suspension.
Wesley’s trust board said last week the timing and nature of the ministry’s suspension of the licence had “placed significant pressure on students, families and staff”.
“The board believes the ministry’s approach has been unnecessarily disruptive, particularly for Year 9 and 10 students in the final weeks of the school year who are engaged in exams, learning projects and end-of-year commitments. The board is disappointed the ministry also chose to release details to the media before meeting with the board,” Wesley said.
“The trust board and school leadership take student safety seriously and believe they have met all requirements.
“The legal action relates solely to the abrupt closure directive, which affects Year 9 and Year 10 students. As the school community was advised earlier this term, we planned to close the hostels at the end of Term 4 in an orderly and well-supported way. The board remains focused on ensuring the safety, stability and continuity of care for all Wesley College students boarding in the hostels.”
The board said it had also made changes to address any concerns. They included:
As first reported by the Herald, education officials had serious concerns about Wesley’s hostel.
“This decision [to close the hostels] follows a pattern of serious and ongoing concerns about the safety and wellbeing of boarders,” the Ministry of Education’s Sean Teddy told the Herald.
“While some improvements have been made since special conditions were imposed on the hostel’s renewed licence in April 2025, further serious incidents have occurred this year. These incidents have highlighted persistent issues with student safety, staff oversight and the hostel’s ability to shift away from longstanding practices that place boarders at risk.”
Teddy said the ERO’s recommendation, “alongside the ministry’s own monitoring and the recurrence of harmful incidents, has led to the conclusion that continued operation of the hostel in its current state is not in the best interests of boarders”.
Previous ERO reviews of the Wesley College hostel raised safety concerns and prompted the ministry to review the college’s hostel licence.
In April 2025, it imposed five conditions on the hostel licence, including enhanced supervision, strategic planning, facility upgrades and mandatory incident reporting.
After the July 2025 meeting, ERO evaluators visited the college on site for one day and held five online meetings.
The report said ERO spoke to 27 students, met with the trust board chair and the principal.
It also spoke with other groups, including the dorm parents who were involved in the incident.
ERO found the school leadership team and trust board acted promptly after the incident was disclosed to them.
“School and hostel staff faced difficulties conducting thorough investigations and determining the individuals responsible for the assaults.
“A persuasive culture of not speaking out (a code of silence) and accepting bullying and assault as a ‘rite of passage’ in the hostel persists, despite the efforts of the principal, senior school leaders and some hostel staff to shift this,” the report said.
It found there were “deeply entrenched” practices and intergenerational beliefs and attitudes within the student body and some of the hostel staff continued to perpetuate a culture of “intimidation and systematic abuse”.
The report noted there had been ongoing improvements to the hostel, particularly after this incident.
“Investments have been made in safeguarding and planning and actions to change the ethos.”
While policies and processes in place for supervision and support in the hostel had been improved, the report said there was an absence of a culture where students feel confident and safe to speak up.
The report said leaders believed the number of reported incidents was increasing as students felt more comfortable speaking up.
ERO said it was not assured that further physical bullying and assaults would not occur again.
“ERO does not have confidence that hostel culture has sufficiently improved and that the five hostel buildings are positive, inclusive and emotionally safe climates and environments for all learners.”
It recommended the Secretary for Education take formal steps to revoke the school’s hostel licence.
The report also found NCEA results at Level 2 and 3 were improving and university entrance had risen by 15%.
The school’s curriculum relevance and authenticity were developing positively, it said.