One of New Zealand’s oldest schools has passed its 175-year assignment.
Dave Sampson, who has been the principal for 12 years, says the answer to Ranzau School reaching 175 years was the strong community, quality education, and its enthusiastic young adults.
“We’ll get second, third and fourth generation kids coming into our school which is really neat and having that long term connection with families is really important to us,” he says.
“There’s always really positive parents who appreciate all the hard work our amazing team put into supporting their students and any opportunities that we give.
“It’s amazing the number of people who you bump into and they say ‘what do you do’ and I say ‘I work at Ranzau School’ and they say ‘oh, I used to go to that school’ so it’s incredible for a small school how well our students actually do.”
Dave says Ranzau School could also be shifting again for the third time in its history, to Richmond West once the idea has been ticked by the Ministry of Education.
“Ranzau was founded by people exploring, moving to new locations just to find out what is best for their people, for their students, and we’re excited that we can also follow in their footsteps and be explorers and develop new possibilities on a new site,” he says.
“Population growth is part of it, part of it is to increase capacity, and part of it is looking at those wonderful opportunities that can be provided for students in that area as well.
“The ministry have informed us that the master planning of the site will start next year, but still no end date at present.”
Dave says the 175-year celebrations will kick off at the school on 18 November between 10am and 2pm with memorabilia and students work on the school’s history on display, as well as student performances, food and coffee carts and kids’ activities.
He says the community, and past, present and future students are welcome to attend. A ticketed celebration for past students and staff will take place in the afternoon at Hope Community Church Cafe.
