Headmaster Patrick Drumm says Mount Albert Grammar is considering splitting into two as it looks to find better ways to handle an expected 4500 students in the coming years. Photo / NZME
Auckland’s second-biggest high school is proposing a radical restructure as it struggles to cope with booming student numbers, projected to hit 4500 in the coming years.
Mount Albert Grammar headmaster Patrick Drumm said his school had begun investigating whether it should split into middle and senior schools, for Years 9 to 11 and Years 12 to 13 respectively.
The move was aimed at “front-footing” immense pressure Mount Albert Grammar School (MAGS) faced trying to provide quality education to the extra students moving into its zone because of population growth and increased apartment- and home-building.
Drumm believed the middle and senior schools could foster greater “connection and belonging” among students, while providing practical benefits, such as gaining greater flexibility to offset timetables to free up limited classroom space.
“This is about trying to ensure that we’ve got structures in the school that support the human goals of ... connection and belonging,” Drumm said.
“Once you get that right, we know that the learning happens from there.”
MAGS hoped its historic transition – one of the first among public schools – could begin symbolically next year, with the full model evolving in subsequent years.
Drumm said the school’s new board had given its blessing to exploring the option, made up of a middle school with about 2000 students and a senior school with similar numbers.
Should MAGS make the transition, it would likely be watched by schools across Auckland that are also facing extreme pressure from growing student numbers.
South Auckland schools Papakura High School, Manurewa High School and Aorere College all told the Herald last week that they were over capacity in terms of student numbers and desperately awaiting new classrooms.
Papakura High principal Simon Craggs said his school had grown 30% in two years, while Manurewa High headmaster Pete Jones believed his school was at least 11 classrooms short.
Drumm said MAGS was also hard-pressed with new classrooms and buildings it had requested from the Ministry of Education seeming to “be a long, long way away”.
That had forced MAGS to find more efficient ways to use its existing facilities.
On a recent trip by Kiwi headmasters to Australia to visit some of that country’s biggest high schools, Drumm said he noticed the popularity of middle and senior schools.
The model not only helped to maximise facilities, like indoor sports courts, science labs and classrooms, by potentially having students attend during different hours, but could provide more growth opportunities, he said.
One example was introducing new middle school captains for Year 11 students.
“We tend to lean really heavily on our Year 13 prefects,” Drumm said.
“So we wanted to try to really look at how we can ... grow that leadership further down in the school.”
It could also provide the feeling of a smaller school community, while not losing the connection between the two groups of students, he said.
Staff could expect more opportunities as well, with the model likely leading to new middle and senior school headmaster positions.
The split wasn’t a bid for more government money, however, Drumm said.
Under current education policy, public schools receive a certain level of funding per student.
However, big schools often lose out on “add-on” funding.
For instance, schools with at least 1400 students could claim extra funding for one associate headmaster position.
But there was no extra funding for bigger schools, because they could only claim funding for one associate headmaster even if they exceeded 2800 students, Drumm said.
The same applied to other positions, with MAGS employing five full-time guidance staff, despite schools only being able to claim funding for a maximum of three.
Despite that, the move to split into two schools wouldn’t lead to more funding or the ministry treating the schools as separate from each other, Drumm said.
That meant the change would likely cost the school, rather than bring in more cash.
MAGS had more autonomy than some other schools because of its “significant international student programme”.
“Without that, we’re really dead in the water,” Drumm said.
This issue was not new for MAGS.
This year, it was among several popular Auckland state high schools that closed their doors entirely to out-of-zone families, saying there was no more space.
Drumm had also previously been vocal about the need for new schools in high-growth areas, stating in a past Herald article that it “should have happened 10 years ago”.
Potentially moving into a middle and senior school model was the next step in vigorously planning for how to grow into a mega-school in the best possible way, rather than “just letting it happen to us”, he said.
Ministry of Education North leader Isabel Evans said: “We are aware that Mount Albert Grammar School is in the initial stages of exploring options to redefine its school structure. We understand this is not a plan to create two separate schools.”
Ben Leahy is a reporter for the New Zealand Herald.