An extra 307 students joined in the past year alone.
Overseeing one of Auckland’s fastest-growing secondaries, headmaster Patrick Drumm is drastically rethinking how his school will cope in the future.
“How big do you go? How big is too big? We’re really going into unknown territory,” he told the Herald.
Not every Auckland school has grown over the past 25 years. The Herald’s analysis of Ministry of Education data found about one third of all public schools in the region now have fewer students than they did in the year 2000.
But many public schools, especially secondaries in Auckland’s inner suburbs, are straining to bursting as student numbers grow faster than overall population growth.
Mt Albert Grammar’s student numbers have jumped 149% since 2000.
By comparison, New Zealand’s school-aged population has only risen 18% over the same time.
And Drumm doesn’t expect Auckland’s rapid growth – fuelled by new housing developments and near-record immigration – to end soon.
“We’re still a very desirable country... the demand is going to be there for a long, long time,” he said.
Private schools growing fastest
Auckland’s schools are growing faster than anywhere else in the country, and private schools are growing fastest of all.
The city is home to a third of the country’s students, so about 300,000 pupils flock into Auckland region schools each day.
That’s 78,000 – or 35% – more students than 25 years ago.
The vast majority still go to public schools. But the public system’s squeeze may be leading more parents to look elsewhere for education.
Private school enrolments have shot up 84% since 2000.
That compares to a 30% rise for public schools, and a 53% jump for Catholic and other integrated schools that own their buildings and land but receive state-school-level funding for each of their students.
Student squeeze: the schools with 1000 more pupils
Mt Albert Grammar is not the only school battling big increases in students.
Rangitoto College – the city’s biggest school – now has 3813 students, a 1334 rise compared to 25 years ago.
Macleans College now welcomes 1241, or 54%, more students than two decades ago, while Western Springs College-Ngā Puna o Waiōrea has 1233 or 200% more students, thanks in part to big new classroom blocks being built at the school.
Famous schools Auckland Grammar and Epsom Girls’ Grammar are also growing, but their increases have been more modest at 35% and 32% respectively.
Saint Kentigern College – which opened to girls as a co-educational college in the 2000s – is among the fastest-growing private schools. It’s up 118% or 1260 students.
Other well-known private schools, King’s College and St Cuthbert’s College, have each added a few hundred students to their rolls, growing 34% and 33% respectively.
Yet not all schools are growing, according to Ministry of Education data.
Public secondary schools that now have at least 200 fewer students than 25 years ago include Glenfield College, Kelston Boys’ High School, Kelston Girls’ College, Edgewater College and Birkenhead College.
Advocates for equitable schooling warn that the number of students attending a school shouldn’t be conflated with its quality, saying high-quality public schools can be found across the city.
Growing into ‘unknown territory’
Mt Albert Grammar’s huge growth led it to jump from Auckland’s 15th-biggest school in 2000 to its second-biggest by 2011.
Feeling the strain, it now expects it won’t be able to accept any out-of-zone students in 2026.
Headmaster Drumm said his team’s focus was on maintaining Mt Albert Grammar’s high education standards and desirable status, while managing the growth.
“You want to be a magnet school for your own community. You want parents who live in proximity to your school to be able to have confidence their children can attend it,” he said.
He was “very grateful” for the recent opening of a new $30 million, 22-classroom building for 600 students.
However, when the older classrooms that were demolished to make way for the new block were factored in, MAGs ended up with a net gain of only about eight to 10 classrooms, he said.
With public schools totally reliant on the Government to get new classrooms, it’s often a long process, making it hard to keep up with demand.
Drumm pointed out that while building a 600-student classroom block at an existing school might cost $30m, it could cost about $250m to build a new school from scratch for 600 students with all the facilities they would need.
That means existing schools would probably keep getting bigger as governments expanded them in preference to building new schools.
Given that, Drumm called for school building and expansion to be given strategic planning status on the same level as transport and other infrastructure.
He also joined a recent delegation of Kiwi schools to Brisbane to find out how big schools there were managing growth.
He called on the Government to support local schools with more than 3000 students, saying they often had to manage the process themselves while maintaining quality.
Auckland heading for 2 million people
Schools across Auckland are growing faster than forecast, the Ministry of Education said.
That’s partly because of the record number of migrants entering New Zealand last year and settling in the city.
“Statistics NZ data shows Auckland’s population is likely to reach two million in the next 10 to 15 years,” Isabel Evans, from the ministry’s Te Tai Raro (North) division, said.
“To manage this growth, our key planning activities include the forecasting and modelling for new schools, school expansions and roll growth as well as making best use of our current facilities.”
Evans said between July 2019 and June 2024 the ministry added more than 900 Auckland teaching spaces.
She also pointed to the new Mt Albert Grammar teaching block and whare, which opened in May.
The Government’s 2024 Budget aimed “to accelerate our response to this growth in Auckland” by delivering a mix of new, repurposed and refurbished modular buildings, she said.
