Proud palagi in a hip-hop world

The crisp suit of John Heyes, principal of Mangere College, sticks out in South Auckland. Picture / Dean Purcell

A cold late-winter morning at Mangere College finds three Year 13 boys hugging the heater on the wall of form room 13ED with its green walls and a poster of Che Guevara.

The teacher, Scott Edwards, introduces Alu, "the best dressed", and Muli, "another leader of men".

Then there's Mike: "I'm the best looking. The fastest, the strongest."

His teacher adds: "And the most delusional."

He reads the messages: the detention list, a free holiday performing arts course, anyone who knows about a lost pink key ring is to see Ms Patel.

College principal John Heyes started his career at Auckland Grammar teaching English. After 10 years he went looking for a challenge and ended up as head of English at Otahuhu College in 1988.

He took over as principal at Mangere in 2002, his crisp suits and still strong English accent sticking out like a sore thumb in school with an 80 per cent Pacific population.

Being a palagi principal at a school with only a 1 per cent Pakeha student base does not bother him.

"I'm English but I grew up in Scotland until I was 16 and then we came here. So all my life I've been either a Sassenach or a Pom. There are elements of being an outsider in each of those communities."

People told Mr Heyes he was mad. Grammar kicks students out for wanting to be there enough to lie, while in Mangere they're trying to keep the students there long enough to get qualifications.

There is a lot he is proud of.

The school's Pacific Island students achieved well compared to the counterparts at other similar schools. Mangere students exceeded national averages in subjects such as art, languages, health and physical education.

The hip-hop dancers won the Bring It On competition this year and head boy Andy Piutau has just returned from the hip-hop internationals dance competition in the USA. He says he likes the school - "it just feels like family, like home". He's in the 1st XV and wants to be a doctor.

But Mr Heyes does not put a relentlessly positive spin on the school, home to 700 students. Mangere College has its problems. The classrooms need re-fitting. The night before there was a tagging attack. There's barbed wire around the swimming pool complex. Children arrive at secondary school two years behind in literacy and numeracy. Gang-related murders send ripples through the school, because people know people. The school uniform committee has to decide against much-coveted pleated skirts because of the extra cost.

Each Year 9 entrant is given a thorough health check, which often picks up problems such as glue ear and poor eyesight, which are usually discovered at a much earlier age.

"If you'd asked me when I started teaching 28 years ago that I would head a school which employed nurses, social workers, provided a general practice health care, physiotherapy and dental care I would have laughed and said it's not the responsibility of a school to provide those things."

What makes Mr Heyes happiest is when a young women runs up, shrieking, and hugs him. It's a former student who has had to fend for herself since she was about 16.

The school gave her a scholarship to do a fabric design course. She's come back to say she loves it so much she's decided to do the full diploma.

"For every disaffected man with a concrete block on the overbridge of the motorway, we've got 10 like her," Mr Heyes says later.

"But I don't think you saw too many students hanging out of windows with switchblades, did you? That is the kind of image people have of South Auckland."

He thinks he would have been "a typical Grammar master" if he'd stayed put, "teaching the brightest minds in the country".

"I could have put my feet up and thought, 'I can happily do this for the rest of my life'." He's glad he didn't.