The Wellington schools that are on a roll
Bishop Viard College has gone from a struggling school with a roll that had almost halved to one yielding the most impressive growth across the Wellington region. The Porirua-based state-integrated secondary school with a Catholic core saw its roll drop dramatically from about a peak close to 500 in 2010, down to a low of 231 in 2019.
Since then it’s rapidly grown to 360 by last year, and 420 students this year. And its not the only school showing positive student number increases in the past three years. Naenae College, Scots College, Upper Hutt College, Wellington High School, Whitby Collegiate were among those with the biggest growth, along with an impressive uptake for Māori immersion schools.
At Bishop Viard, it’s something principal Chris Theobald is very proud of. Theobald, who started at the school in 2019, said the 80% increase was a restoration of previous enrolments.
“The roll is growing, but it’s also just correcting itself to what it should be.” It’s even surpassed the Ministry of Education’s expectations with an original forecast roll of 399 students for this year. The school has two main entry points in year 7 and year 9, Theobald explained. The school isn’t zoned, drawing many of it’s majority Māori and Pasifika students from the Porirua East community and Tawa. Theobald said the college was also increasingly pulling from “town” schools offering “just as good opportunities”.
It shows in the school NCEA results too, which have also improved dramatically since 2019.
NCEA level 1 results, which sat about 50% in 2019, are now closer to 80% and well above the national average of 64.9%. It’s the same for the school’s NCEA level 2, 3 and university entrance attainment rates. He attributed the school’s rapid roll growth to its management of relationships and expectations.
“What we do in the five or seven years that we have a child is either going to open doors or shut doors for the rest of their lives. So we take that responsibility pretty seriously.”
Naenae College’s roll has jumped 13% from 712 students in 2019 to 806 last year. The ministry forecast for this year was 827, with the school coming in at above 860. While seen as a positive, unexpected roll growth brought its own challenges, principal Chris Taylor said.
“One of the the downsides to the ministry is they fund you based on the role they predict you get, so in our case the extra 50 we’ve got they will offer us extra staffing but it will be in June and July. “We’ve also got massive concrete buildings, so they’re very inflexible and what they were built for years and years ago is very different to the needs of the classes today.”
Taylor, who is in his first year at the school as principal, attributed some of the growth to relatively affordable house prices in the Hutt area though there were multiple factors.
“As a new principal it’s great to be able to sit in this seat and be able to say to the community we must be a school of choice because look at our roll.”
Naenae’s roll is also considered fairly “fluid”, with Taylor explaining social housing and arrival of migrant and refugee families often saw the roll change throughout the year.
He said while they had an additional 50 year 9 students last year too, this year’s extras were coming from the senior end of the school. At the other end of the spectrum, one of the country’s largest private schools has also seen rapid growth in recent years, largely in part due to it going co-ed.
Scots College in Wellington introduced girls in 2020. Its roll has jumped 26% since the change in 2020 rising from 857 students to 1084 students last year. Headmaster Graeme Yule said the demand was also driven by the school’s curriculum, with increases at the junior level relating to its “traditional” approach to literacy and numeracy.
At the senior level its alternative offering of International Baccalaureate was also driving demand, as “NCEA has a bit of a bad rap”. Yule said moving to co-ed had been considered a “real success”, though the school had also been mindful not to reduce the number of spaces available for its boys. Of 1150 students this year, 375 are girls and 875 are boys – in keeping with previous rolls, he said.
“That’s absolute capacity.”
Last year the school had an additional 400 applicants it was unable to provide spaces for and was now looking to build. “We are seeing significant growth for places. Our roll growth is being limited by our capacity.”
“What we do in the five or seven years that we have a child is either going to open doors or shut doors for the rest of their lives. So we take that responsibility pretty seriously.”
Chris Theobald
Bishop Viard College principal