Mt Albert Primary School in Auckland which is at student capacity. Photo / Dean Purcell
Mt Albert Primary School in Auckland which is at student capacity. Photo / Dean Purcell
Auckland's unprecedented population growth has sparked a territorial scrap between two neighbouring schools.
Gladstone Primary School in Mt Albert - the country's fourth-biggest primary school with 915 students - has asked for an urgent meeting with Ministry of Education officials over a ministry proposal to include a large chunk of Gladstone's current zone in a new zone for Mt Albert Primary School.
Although Mt Albert Primary is much smaller with only 441 students, ministry deputy secretary Katrina Casey said the school needed a zone because its roll had more than doubled in the past six years.
"Mt Albert Primary School's roll has been increasing steadily over the past few years. That growth is expected to continue, in part due to intensification made possible by the Unitary Plan," she said.
A surge of migrants combined with a reduced outflow of New Zealanders has driven up Auckland's population by 121,200 or 8.1 per cent in the three years to last June - a bigger increase than the 110,500 people added between the 2006 and 2013 censuses.
The St Lukes area around Mt Albert Primary jumped by 564 residents or 13.7 per cent between the two censuses.
Other schools in the area are struggling to cope. Pt Chevalier Kindergarten had to move off its previous site to make space for an expansion of Pt Chevalier Primary School in 2015.
Mt Albert and Gladstone primary schools are both members of the same Mt Albert Community of Learning, a new Government initiative aimed at increasing collaboration between schools.
But Gladstone's board of trustees said it was "not supportive of the draft zone [for Mt Albert Primary] in its current form".
The proposed western edge of the new Mt Albert Primary zone is the western rail line between Mt Albert Rd and Baldwin Ave, reaching at one point to within 400m of Gladstone Primary.
The proposal would allow a choice between the two schools for families living east of the rail line as far east as St Lukes Rd and Alberton Ave. The same will be the case for families living in the cross-over zones for Mt Albert Primary, Newton Central and Edendale schools.
Gladstone's board is believed to fear that the whole area east of the rail line might eventually become exclusively zoned for Mt Albert Primary.
Gladstone Board of Trustees chairwoman Fiona Barker said she wanted to "get around the table" with the ministry.
"There is a whole lot of strategy that I think sits behind these issues. We need to hear exactly what their strategy is, then we will know how to proceed," she said.
"Auckland is growing. It's not going to be in anyone's interests to reduce the size of any school, it's more the strategy around how do we all deal with the same problem."
Gladstone Primary is a decile 9 school and has historically drawn children from within the new zone for Mt Albert Primary, which is a decile 6 school and has been seen as less attractive.
Historian Deborah Dunsford, who published a history of Mt Albert last year, said Mt Albert Primary was built for more than 500 students in 1940, but lost students as the area changed.
"I guess from the 1980s on the ethnic mix changed and there was white flight, as there was from Mt Albert Grammar as well," she said.
We need to hear exactly what [the Ministry of Education's] strategy is, then we will know how to proceed.
Mt Albert Primary's roll plunged to a low of just 159 in 2005 and was seen by some as a "ghost school", but has recovered with population growth since then.
Board chairman Jonathan Boow said a new classroom block opened in 2015 was now full and some classes had moved into prefabs.
Some of the growing roll came from parents living outside the area who drop their children at Mt Albert on their way to work, he said. Existing students will be able to stay at the school, but the school will be harder to access for out-of-zone families after the new zone comes into force on May 1.
"Given our current roll growth, we don't think there will be many places for out-of-zone enrolments," he said.
Albert-Eden Local Board chair Dr Peter Haynes said the Education Ministry needed to review all the schools in the area given a planned 5500 new residents in a housing project on Unitec land.
"We are worried about what's going to happen when another 5000 or 6000 people are living on the Unitec site, because there appears to be no real interest in the Ministry of Education to plan ahead for these things," he said.
