Obituary: Phil Raffills

School principal.
Born in 1946. Died at Hillsborough this week from leukaemia, aged 54.


By BERNARD ORSMAN

Christianity drove Phil Raffills. At home, at school, in politics. Behind the steadfast critic of conventional educational thinking and sectoral power, there was a Protestant faith, a passion for excellence and a granite integrity to his own principles.

"Get to the top," was his challenge to students, always with the rider, "take someone with you."

He believed in competition among schools and enthusiastically embraced the idea that they should meet a market. He headed Avondale College, the largest school in the country, for 14 years. But he always called it the Avondale family.

Warmly greeted around the grounds, he invariably would stop, listen, find out another name, share a story.

It was at a university Christian conference in Dunedin that Phil Raffills met his wife, Noelene. Newly married and shortly after graduating from Christchurch College of Education in 1969, he took a teaching post in Rarotonga for two years.

This was followed by another two-year stint at the United Nations School in New York.

Back in Auckland, he was to begin his association with Avondale College, where he made his biggest mark, and the Encounter Christian Centre in Mt Roskill where he worshipped.

He was a leading voice on the Auckland Secondary Schools Heads Association, founded the Association of Bulk Funded Schools and the ministerial schools consultative group.

When fire gutted the school in 1990, he worked day and night with volunteers to resurrect it, and had students back within a week.

One day on the way to his makeshift office, Phil Raffills paused to pick up a discarded sweet wrapper. Some might have seen futility in this gesture - what's one piece of paper compared with the 300 truckloads that had to be removed - but to Phil Raffills it made a difference.

His moral conservatism on issues such as sex education and the Hero Parade ruffled many feathers, but Noelene Raffills recalls that he "never ever thought of himself as being controversial."

He followed his own mind, giving no thought to whether others approved or the unpleasantness he might have encounter.

In 1995, Phil Raffills became an Auckland City councillor where he proved a few knockers wrong when a millennium medal he proposed became a huge success.