Levin’s Horowhenua College records biggest roll spike in 70 years as more classrooms brought in

Four new classrooms were trucked to Horowhenua College last week.

Four new classrooms have been shipped in to Levin’s Horowhenua College to help address the sharpest roll increase at the school in more than 70 years.

Student numbers hovered near 500-600 for more than a decade, until a spike in the roll about four years ago.

Now the school has almost 900 students, numbers not seen since the 1950s when it was the only secondary school between Wellington and Palmerston North with a roll of more than 1200 students.

Horowhenua College gets four new classrooms as the student roll hits 900.

Horowhenua College principal Grant Congdon said Ministry of Education officials were aware of the spike in the roll, and also population forecasts for the wider Horowhenua region, tipped to increase by more than 20,000 people in the next 20 years.

“We’re a bit pushed for space. The ministry can see we’ve run out of classrooms and have fronted with four new ones,” he said.

Condon said it could be that even more classrooms, built off site and transported to the school, would be required soon and he welcomed the expansion.

“People are realising Levin is a great place to be. It’s exciting. It provides opportunities for us to look at greater capacity and expand the curriculum,” he said.

The four new classrooms are on the northern side of the school where an old two-storey classroom block, North Block, was pulled down in 2020 when the school roll was sitting at 615.

The new classrooms at Horowhenua College are placed at the site where the old North Block stood.

At the time it was decided the building, which was built in the 1970s and contained asbestos, needed a lot of of upkeep and was not worth maintaining.

Meanwhile, less than 1km across town, the Waiopehu College roll sits at 630 students. Further north, Manawatū College in Foxton has a roll of 291, while Ōtaki College to the south has a roll of 355 students.

Horowhenua College opened in 1940, and Waiopehu College in 1973.