A new private school is set to open in central Auckland. Photo / 123RF
A new private school is set to open in central Auckland. Photo / 123RF
A new private school is set to open in central Auckland, teaching pupils from new entrants through to secondary school level, with classes possibly starting by Term 4.
The new school, City 0-10, aims to provide competitive fees, a “world-leading curriculum” and maximum class sizes of 25 studentsfor central Auckland families.
The man behind the new school is Alwyn Poole, a co-founder of multiple charter schools and involved in Mt Hobson Middle School and the Villa NCEA Academy.
The school, which will be in the middle of the city, aims to have a roll of 250 pupils.
Poolecurrently heads Innovative Education Consultants, conducting research into the education system.
A new private school is set to open in central Auckland. Photo / 123RF
Where will this school be?
Poole said the new school was to be in central Auckland, which has “57,000 households and not a single school”.
The area had no state school, he said, so families were forced to send their children outside the central city.
At this stage, the school was expected to grow to a size of 250 students at the site.
“The next step is to have a Year 11 to 13 school, and we’ve got a site for that as well.”
Why is it private?
Poole said the decision to become a private school was made because the Associate Minister for Education, David Seymour, was not able to negotiate significant funding.
“It’s tough to make it private because I would prefer that it had been a designated character school, which is a co-op or a charter school.
“One of the really difficult things with a private school in New Zealand is that you have a set of criteria that you have to meet, but it’s almost retrospective as opposed to, say, trying to set up a designated character school or an integrated school or a charter school, which require the minister’s approval; a private school doesn’t.”
He said one of the criteria before you could apply was that you had to have nine students.
“It’s a little bit cloak and dagger because you can’t get approval until you meet the criteria, and you can’t meet the criteria until you get approval.”
Seymour said, “The charter program is well funded and developing very nicely. Mr Poole‘s applications to run a charter school were not rejected by the authorisation board due to a lack of funding.
Poole said he had processes in place to make the school affordable, including scholarship options.
He had previously applied for four charter schools, two in the central city, one in Ellersie for neurodiverse students and one in Warkworth, Poole said.
“It turns out that Associate Minister Seymour had only been able to negotiate $10 million until the end of June this year, which threw a lot of people off because we could have done this under that model if he had been able to negotiate a much better funding.”
Poole has previously been outspoken on education issues such as the decline in the performance of New Zealand students.
Poole’s other relevant experience in the education system includes his holding support sport coaching roles at Hamilton Boys’ High School and St Cuthbert’s College.
