Private school planned for Hobsonville site

By WAYNE THOMPSON

A private school for up to 1500 pupils is planned for a rural site at Hobsonville, in north-west Auckland.

The project's promoters, who have built schools in Auckland's affluent Karaka and Gulf Harbour areas, say "Sunderland" will serve a demand for high-quality education in Waitakere, North Shore and Rodney.

Businessmen Alex Findlay and Stephen Fleming, and former McLeans College principal Allen McDonald, propose building the school on a 17ha site handy to where the Upper Harbour Motorway will eventually link Waitakere City and North Shore.

Mr Findlay said it had taken several years to find a suitable location for the Sunderland campus and this one had the space to offer "a beautiful learning environment".

Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey welcomed the plan yesterday after the promoters announced they were seeking a resource consent.

He said the north-western area of Auckland was opening up for development and needed schools.

The 150 staff expected at Sunderland would also provide a boost to the local economy.

Sunderland is designed to develop in stages for up to 120 preschoolers, 400 primary students and 1000 secondary students.

Mr Findlay said it would be similar to the Strathallan Campus, which opened in Karaka, South Auckland, in September 2001 and has 600 pupils.

Wentworth College, which opened last year at Gulf Harbour, on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula, does not have preschoolers in its roll of 105.

Mr Findlay said Sunderland offered the advantage of allowing brothers and sisters to attend the same school and go through their entire schooling on the one site.

It would be split into three schools on one campus with separate principals and uniforms to give pupils a feeling of rite of passage as they moved up. The schools would share educational philosophy and management by a charitable trust as well as five playing fields.

The trust would have a long-term lease on the school from the property company which built it.

"It's a successful model, which enables us to build a school rapidly without the school trust having to worry about fund-raising," said Mr Findlay. "We provide first-class facilities and they get on with running a great school."

The system means parents are not hit with building levies on top of tuition fees, which for Strathallan and Wentworth senior pupils can be up to $11,000 a year.

Wentworth principal Bruce Tong will help the Sunderland board to recruit staff for an opening in 2005.

The executive director of Independent Schools, Joy Quigley, said 44 of 112 member schools were in the Auckland region.

The Mt Hobson Middle School also opened in Auckland City last year for private pupils.

Ms Quigley said school growth showed many Aucklanders chose to send their children to independent schools - despite having to pay taxes for public education, tuition fees and GST on the fees.