Rotorua Boys' High School principal Chris Grinter has been appointed a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to education and Māori. He has been the principal since 1991. Photo / Mead Norton
Rotorua Boys' High School principal Chris Grinter has been appointed a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to education and Māori. He has been the principal since 1991. Photo / Mead Norton
Chris Grinter
Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to education and Māori
Rotorua Boys’ High School’s principal has been appointed a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to education and Māori after spending the “vast majority” of his career dedicated to schools with high Māori populations.
Chris Grinter, who has worked in the education sector for 48 years, said it came as a surprise, however, he also felt “something of discomfort at being singled out when you know you were actively part of a larger team”.
“As principal of a high school, you know you’re part of a large staff group and there’s great community support so the success of the school is the work of many.”
He said it was an “honour” and he was humbled by the appointment.
Grinter has been the principal of Rotorua Boys’ High School since 1991. He was born in Auckland but grew up in Taupiri in the Waikato as the son of dairy farmers.
Asked why he chose a career in education, Grinter said in some ways, he “fell into it”.
He did a bachelor’s degree at the University of Canterbury in sociology and geography and then went on to study criminology at Victoria University of Wellington.
“At that point, I was moving towards perhaps university teaching,” he said.
However, after finishing his university studies, he did the “traditional OE”, travelling through Asia before arriving in London.
There, he discovered high school teaching was a good option to see Europe and earn some money along the way.
His first teaching job was in London, which he did for two years.
“I’ve loved it ever since,” he said.
Rotorua Boys' High School principal Chris Grinter, pictured in 2014. Photo / NZME
“I never dreamt for a minute that my full working life career would be as a teacher but that’s certainly how it’s transpired.”
After his two-year stint in London, Grinter travelled back to New Zealand.
“Of course in those days, it was easy. You could literally go through Pakistan and Iran and those countries without any issues.”
When he returned, he took a job at Ngāruawāhia High School.
“I was there for eight years before moving to Wesley College as deputy principal.”
He was at Wesley College in Paerata in the Auckland region for six years, before being appointed principal at Rotorua Boys’ High School in 1991.
Grinter said the “vast majority” of his career focused on schools with a high Māori population.
“Ngāruawāhia High School, Wesley College and certainly Rotorua Boys are schools where the education of young Māori is at the forefront.
“As a young man from Taupiri, it’s the environment I’m most familiar with. And as an educator, in the case of Rotorua Boys’ High School, seeing young Māori achieving equal or better than their non-Māori peers is a challenge that I’ve tried to embrace.”
Grinter said his educational leadership journey had been “very much focused” on addressing the gap between the achievement of young Māori and non-Māori.
“Watching Rotorua boys, in particular, address that gap and close that group has been a source of great satisfaction and I’m grateful to the staff and students and board members who have accompanied me on that journey over these three decades.”
