Private schools aim to grow

Private schools are planned for Hobsonville and Taupo to cater for a demand for up-market education.

They are being promoted by Auckland businessmen Alex Findlay and Stephen Fleming, co-founders of the Strathallan Campus at Karaka and Wentworth College, Gulf Harbour.

These premier independents, as Mr Findlay calls them, command senior pupil fees of about $11,000 a year.

Mr Findlay said it was hoped to open stage one of Beaumont College next year on a 15ha site, 10 minutes drive from central Taupo.

Outdoor pursuits will feature at the proposed co-ed school, which will take pre-schoolers to year 13s.

A "beautiful learning environment" is promised for Beaumont and the planned Hobsonville school, Sunderland College.

Mr Findlay said 1000 families had indicated that they wanted to enrol children in the school as soon as it was built.

That could be two years away.

The promoters are seeking resource consent for a site beside the Upper Harbour Motorway, which will eventually link Waitakere City and the North Shore. The site is on the rural side of the motorway, under proposals for shifting the metropolitan urban limit at Hobsonville, with the motorway as the boundary.

The Auckland Regional Council will be one of seven objectors when the resource consent bid is heard by commissioners in July. It says schools are an urban activity and the proposal is beyond even the proposed urban limits. More than 40 submitters are supporting the bid and Mr Findlay says the Waitakere City Council has been very supportive.

Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey said the city was attracting people to jobs in new high-tech industries. "The first question I get asked is 'where will my kids go to school?' because overseas people are used to schools offering this up-market education."