Bells ring out for change in country schools

By GEOFF CUMMING

Surrounded by dairy farms west of Putaruru, a small country school is a lesson for schools looking at mergers to stay afloat. Two years ago, Puketurua Primary joined forces with struggling Arapuni School to stave off closure.

Its initiative was rewarded with a Ministry of Education grant of $160,000 and rural bus funding. The community rallied around, helping to extend the main building and furnishing new prefabs.

Then the ministry changed its mind. Roll growth was apparently below expectations and, at the end of last year, the school closed.

Now Puketurua children bus into town to Putaruru Primary, itself a merger of four primary schools on the intermediate school site on the southwestern edge of town.

The new school is only 10km from Puketurua but the circuitous bus trip takes 45 minutes. Children wait for the bus on the gravel path outside their old school gate.

The pool, used by the community over summer, sits empty beneath a new sunshade. The prefabs have been taken into town; wiring put in by locals lies on the ground. Weeds are establishing themselves. And local farmers are still shaking their heads.

"Where's the accountability," says Chris Burnett. "If they knew this was coming, why did they spend all this money?"

Five of Chris and Sally Burnett's six children went to Puketurua; three were there when it closed.

"There's just this vacuum now," says Sally. "People feel cheated after decades of fundraising and working bees. It was just at the point where it was really well resourced and now it's gone."

Puketurua will become nothing more than a dot on a map, she says.

"The school was the hub. Now that it's gone, the community is fractured. It will become a bunch of nuclear families."

Waikato is sprinkled with empty country schools, monuments to a way of life overrun by progress. In crossroads settlements which once boasted a general store, a petrol station, maybe a dairy factory, the school is often the last bastion to fall.

Under Education Minister Trevor Mallard, the Government has stepped up this seemingly inexorable process, encouraging schools to amalgamate before they perish. This week, 18 mid-Northland schools learned they would be reduced to 10.

But what's happened in Putaruru suggests this may be just a stepping stone. This thriving town of 6000 is reeling from a "network review" which has closed four sizeable primary schools and forced children from one side of town to the other, into facilities not yet ready.

The ministry says Putaruru had too many schools for its population - one school for every 630 people, compared with the national average of 1:1450. And its population is forecast to decline from 2009.

Mallard promised mergers would "unlock $4.9 million in extra resources for the education of local students" but the exercise has cost $10.5 million. It will take nearly 10 years to recover the money.

When pupils arrived at the new super-primary for the new school year, only one block in the old intermediate school was open. Most of the 360 children are in the neighbouring Putaruru West Primary School. Even the phones were out; principal Colleen Jaques ended up running from school to school until staff were equipped with cellphones.

At the high school, which now takes Year Seven and Eight (Form One and Two) children, builders are still putting finishing touches, such as ramps and stairs, to new classrooms - which include the Puketurua prefabs.

"It's the injustice of the process that rankles," says Chris Burnett.

"There was never any figure given on what is a viable number for a rural school. Even with 48 children we think it was still viable. It's hard to know whether it's progress or just the whimsy of bureaucrats who have to shut a certain number of schools in each area."

Sally Burnett: "It feels like we have been ripped off by some invisible little army. When the one service we had is taken away, it makes you feel like you don't want to contribute any more. But you still have to support your children in their new venture."

Neighbour Martin Bennett says the Arapuni-Puketurua merger was hailed by the ministry as a guiding light. "All that effort has been given zero value. Questions should be asked how the ministry can waste all that money."

His wife Judith says the ministry promised the children "would go through a merger like this only once in their career".

Rural families are well aware of how it has come to this - farm amalgamations, mechanisation and better transport mean fewer people are needed on the land. Bigger, better-resourced schools are no longer hard to get to and, it is said, they attract better teachers.

But often the schools are not just the last thing standing in these settlements - community life revolves around them. They are where parents meet after school and share gossip.

The Burnetts recall calf club days, galas, fundraising and building projects which brought people together and built community spirit. Locals took ownership of the school's development and used the pool and tennis courts. And the school newsletter became the community's lifeline, with news of upcoming events, issues - and departures.

Just as significant is the emotional pull - many parents hung their bags on the same coathooks as their children. They grew up playing in the parklike grounds, formed friendships and drew inspiration from role-model teachers.

They remember the names of long-departed principals, the strap, the ball they kicked through the staffroom window after the bell had gone, the boy who was supposed to catch it. And the smell, that indefinable odour of generations of children trapped in the rimu panelling.

"I would go in there and it still smelt like it did when I was there," says Chris Burnett. "Funny how they all smell the same."

Just as Puketurua residents tried, other rural communities have set aside emotion to be "proactive" about reorganisation. The board of Tapapa School, 10km northeast of Putaruru, decided last year to merge with Okoroire, 5km away, rather than wait to be closed.

"It would have been easy to rark up the community into a big fight," says Norm Barker, whose grandfather, parents and three children attended the 117-year-old school. "But with fewer people around the district, we could see the writing on the wall.

"We felt that one strong rural school has a future rather than two small schools constantly bartering for pupils."

The main school building was moved with some ceremony at the end of last year to Okoroire, where the combined school has been renamed Kuranui.

"We made it into a positive thing."

Danielle Paki, whose family rent the former school house, is looking after the grounds, which she hopes will be kept for community use. But the ministry must first offer the school to its former owners, in this case a Government department, and then to iwi.

"There were people saying 'no way, we want to keep it going', but the ministry didn't give us that option," says Paki, whose children now bus to Okoroire.

Her three children were both apprehensive and excited about the move, she says. "They knew other kids would be there who had already taken ownership of the school."

Barker says changing the school's name has eased the transition. "We were determined to make the best of it. People see it as a loss of identity but that was happening anyway."

Barker's wife, Eileen, who compiled the centennial booklet in 1986, is not convinced.

"There's a general feeling that Tapapa as a district doesn't have a focal point any more."

But Norm, a district councillor, sees the big picture and supports the amalgamations in nearby Putaruru.

He says it's "absolutely critical" that rural communities develop strong schools.

"If a small town is seen as having weak schools, people vote with their feet. Young people won't come to your town." But in Putaruru, some families chose to leave town rather than send their children to the new school.

Doug McGregor was board chairman of Cambridge St School, on the eastern side of a town split down the middle by State Highway One. The new primary has put on a free bus but can't afford to continue the service.

There are moves to form a walking bus - which for some children means a 3km walk traversing the roaring highway.

"My own daughter was unsettled all holidays," says McGregor, who helped to build Cambridge St in 1963. "She was threatened because she had to leave her school and go to a strange place."

Mergers elsewhere in the Waikato have opened similar schisms. On the dairy plains surrounding Morrinsville, school community unease has led to half a dozen closures and mergers in the past five years. The fallen include Te Hoe, Hoe O Tainui, Te Puninga, Waihou, Ngarua and Te Aroha West.

Even the beneficiaries of mergers, including Tauhei, Tatuanui and Tahuna, eye the future apprehensively. It's a hugely sensitive issue, with principals reluctant to comment lest they reopen still-healing wounds.

Competition from town is an added threat, with Morrinsville schools wooing rural children with offers of free transport.

"Once word gets out that your school might not be around for much longer, parents tend to move their children to the bigger school just in case," says one school board member. "It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Does closure of the school mean the end of the community? It depends on the community. Hoe O Tainui identity Doug Clarke stepped in to chair the local school board when its roll dropped below 30. He says locals were resigned to closure.

"Once it gets to a sole-charge situation, parents start to make choices about the social aspects of their children going to school versus the academic side."

Communities have changed, says Clarke, of the legendary Waikato sporting clan. "There was originally a store, a hall and a school here. We had tennis, indoor bowls, table tennis, a women's division [of Federated Farmers] and a gym club, but they all went into recess.

"People no longer have to go out to be entertained. They have their TVs and hi-fi systems. The district had died as far as interaction socially was concerned."

Hao O Tainui residents do cross paths - on the golf course at Tahuna, 10km away, or at Tahuna Lions. With better roads and modern cars, communities draw a wider circle, says Clarke.

There was time for a 75th jubilee and reunion before the school closed. The history of the school and the area's settlement are recorded in a comprehensive jubilee booklet. At the beginning of 2002, the children transferred to Tauhei, 15km away, which became Tauhei Combined School.

Over on State Highway 27, Te Puninga locals are still coming to terms with their merger a year ago with Tatuanui, a well-resourced school 6km down the road by the Tatua dairy factory.

Peter Le Heron, whose family have farmed at Te Puninga for 60 years, says the process has "in some ways rejuvenated the district".

"It hasn't been the death knell. We're part of a larger community now, which is the Tatua Dairy Company and its catchment, but it's still a community. There's life after death."

Le Heron says rural communities need to set aside parochialism and weigh up what's best for the children before decisions are forced on them.

"It was very sad when Te Puninga closed but it's all about the benefits that bigger schools give your children. It's very difficult when your son's in a class with no other person."

Yet support for the Te Puninga closure was far from universal. Near-neighbour Bruce Isbister surveys a school where he learned to swim, donned the red and white colours to play rugby and got the strap "a few times".

"It may have been a small school but that doesn't stop your education. We've had architects, engineers, designers and teachers come out of here."

Asked how the closure is viewed one year on, the four-square farmer grimaces. "Mmmm. We didn't like it going. We don't know what's going on in the district because the children have gone to three or four different schools.

"The board took it upon themselves rather than wait to be told it would be closing. What can you do?"

The two-classroom school celebrated its 85th jubilee last April, three days after it officially closed. About 400 people came from as far away as England. "Everybody was a bit disappointed but they just enjoyed themselves," says Isbister, not one for over-statement.

The jubilee committee unearthed old photos and records and pieced together a history of the area, now archived in the Morrinsville Museum.

But the solid-rimu school buildings, nestled among huge shade trees, may soon disappear. The ministry has offered them to other schools.

Back in Putaruru, the guinea pig for the next wave of amalgamations, everyone is trying to make the best of the situation.

Maori Women's Welfare League president Ruthana Begbie, who last year condemned the ministry's "lack of consultation", says the new school seems to be functioning well.

"The children are always the quickest to adapt to changes."

In the temporary principal's office, with its "loafing dept" sign on the door, Jaques exudes energy and optimism.

"There's just been a huge turnaround," she says. "There was a lot of angst. People said, 'Why should we have to leave? The school will be too big - we'll just be gobbled up and have no identity left.'

"The interesting thing is that, now they have arrived, the number of positive comments is incredible.

"Everyone's striving to make it work. You wouldn't know now where the children have come from."

She needs to know. An immediate task is to pinpoint on a map where each rural child comes from, so ministry bean counters will maintain "per child" rural bus funding. There are 14 bus routes to account for.