North Porirua, Aotea — Future schooling provision

We’ve been working with Aotea residents and the schools across northern Porirua to look at future roll numbers in the area.

About the review

Populations can change, and we regularly monitor schools rolls to ensure school networks have the capacity to meet potential demand.

Roll growth is putting pressure on some schools in northern Porirua. There's potential for rolls to continue to rise because of the ongoing Aotea Block development and other developments planned in the area. We’re also aware that the opening of Transmission Gully may change the demographic of people living in northern Porirua and may lead to more housing developments across Porirua.

We understand from the community and schools that there are a range of complex issues impacting the provision of education for Porirua.

The Porirua City Council, schools leaders and other community leaders have worked with us to look at solutions to these issues.

Our review process

We use a range of information including our own roll numbers and data from Statistics New Zealand and other local authorities.

Decisions are based on evidence and we value input from schools, parents and the wider community.

We asked for feedback on the following options.

Option 1

Strengthen provision for Year 7-8 at Aotea College, by changing some or all of the northern area primary schools to Year 1-6 and creating Year 7-13 provision at Aotea College.

Option 2

Strengthen provision for Year 1-8, by creating a new primary school or by creating a second campus of Papakowhai School to meet growth in the south of the Aotea Block. This could be located either:

  • on a new site in the south of the Aotea development, or
  • at or near Aotea College.

Option 3

Other options the community may identify in response to this initial feedback round.

Outcome

We are thankful for your involvement in conversations around what schooling might look like in northern Porirua in the future. We know this process has taken some time and we’re grateful for the patience you have shown.

The consultation process gave us a clear steer on the preferred option for managing roll growth in northern Porirua — the establishment of a new Year 1-8 primary school in or near the Aotea Block Development. However, a new school is a large scale investment and as such, a decision to establish one is not taken lightly.

The most recent data shows that the southern end of the Aotea Block Development is not generating as many school aged students as were initially projected. This means that the school aged population growth that we had projected for the area has tracked lower than our initial 2016 projections.

Given this situation, we are not able to progress a new school in Aotea at this time. We will however continue to analyse the population and school roll information across northern Porirua. If the situation changes we will revisit if a school is required.

We will continue to monitor student numbers, in zone school rolls and population projections regularly.

The following document is the briefing we provided to the Minister of Education on the decision.

Briefing document: School network assessment Aotea, Porirua [PDF, 850 KB]

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