Old school skirmish

A battle is being fought within the Range Rover set occupying the leafy streets of Remuera.

And it revolves around Corran School, an independent girls' school on Remuera Rd, that has been educating the daughters of the wealthy for more than 60 years.
In a shock announcement to parents two days before the school holidays, the Corran Trust Board said the school would merge with the even more pricey St Kentigern College by the end of this month.

Corran girls, who every Wednesday troop up the road to St Aidan's Anglican Church for the weekly school service, will now be led in worship by a Presbyterian minister.

Corran has long been associated with the Anglican Church, St Kentigern is Presbyterian. Corran's senior secondary fees are $14,800, St Kentigern's are $19,900.

Parents see Corran's established buildings and lands and adoption of the old-style Cambridge International exams as traditionalist; St Kentigern is seen as more modernist for embracing the NCEA and International Baccalaureate.

On first sight, the merger seems to make sense. Corran's roll had been falling, especially at the senior school level. Last year, the roll fell 84 girls short of the 420 enrolments the school needed to break even, though it picked up this year.

The school has been running at a "significant loss" for three years, said Brent von Sierakowski, chairman of the trust board. He refused to disclose the extent of that loss, but parents estimate the shortfall in fees at $4 million over five years.

By comparison, St Kentigern is one of Auckland's most affluent private schools. Its junior school campus is in Remuera, its large senior school in Pakuranga.

Both schools are steeped in tradition and history. But the differences between them have sparked anger and emotion in the Corran community.

Some parents feel the closure could have been avoided with more transparent governance - or at least delayed long enough for their daughters to complete their schooling.

And they do not understand why Corran, with land and buildings valued by QV at $23 million, couldn't just sell a corner of the property to cover its losses.

About 300 parents packed the College Rifles meeting room on Wednesday night to discuss Corran's fate. Members of the Corran Trust Board declined the invitation to attend, but three representatives from St Kentigern College fronted up to hear the parents' concerns.

St Kentigern's board chairman Bruce Goodfellow tried to alleviate parents' fears that Corran's image and name would die out.

In the planned merger, the Corran junior school will remain on its Remuera site but be called St Kentigern School for Girls at Corran.

Goodfellow, whose grandfather was a founder and patron of the Corran Trust Board, said the board did not want to destroy the values at Corran. "We would want to harness that value at St Kent's as well," he explained.

However, he also told the Herald on Sunday that the school's association with the Anglican parish of St Aidan's would finish at the end of this year.

Instead of their short weekly walk up Remuera Rd, he expects the girls will worship in the school hall with St Kentigern's Presbyterian minister - as the junior boys do at the college's Shore Rd site.

When asked if the girls could continue their weekly visit to St Aidan's, Goodfellow said: "We have our own distinctive Christian education programme.

They are both Protestant faiths and there is not a huge amount of difference between them."

But Corran old girl Susan Benedek said the school had a strong link to St Aidan's Church, which she still attends on Wednesdays.



"Girls would get married there, and have their babies christened," she said. "You start giving away your traditions and you've lost everything."

"They want everything including our previous right of worship."

Benedek has decided to reject the St Kentigern offer, and instead will shift her daughter Grace, 14, to King's College.

"St Kent's has a very different culture to Corran. It's a large school, it's co-ed, and it's out in Pakuranga."

There are also academic differences between the schools.

Corran has won a top Cambridge school award, based on its students' success, four years in a row. But it is one of only a very small number of private schools in the country that offers Cambridge.

Angela Manning and Malcolm Nicholls enrolled their daughter Georgia at Corran because of the small class sizes and because it was a single-sex school.

Being English, Angela Manning wanted Georgia to be educated in the Cambridge system.

Now they intend to shift Georgia to Strathallan College, part of the Academic Colleges Group based in Karaka, so she can continue in the Cambridge system.

But Georgia will miss the small class sizes at Corran, which she believes gave her more time with the teachers. "It's small in a good way," the 11-year-old said.

Wednesday's emotionally-charged meeting was chaired by Neville Segar, whose two daughters attend Corran.

He summed up the mood of the room when he said: "The board has let us down, there's no question the damage is done, and we cannot reverse that."