Wakefield School has its first Year 7 students in more than six decades and its principal says it is great for both the students and the community.
The school is one of the oldest schools in the country that sits on its original site and has been revamping itself since the first classroom was built in 1843. It taught intermediate level until 1958, when it went through the process with the unfortunate name of decapitation. From then on, intermediate-age students got on the bus and headed to other schools such as the then newly-opened Waimea Intermediate.
Now, more than 60 years on, the school is going through recapitation, with Year 7 students included on its roll once again, and Year 8 students welcomed next year when it will become a full primary school. Wakefield announced in 2021 that it would become a full primary school, following the Ministry of Education’s proposals to ease pressure from population growth on Waimea Intermediate.
Wakefield School’s principal, Freya Hogarth, says that once the school made the decision to become a full primary school again it used some of its property funding to create technology and multi-purpose teaching spaces including cooking, digital technology and hard materials.
The beauty of that, she says, is that younger students will now also benefit from those facilities and students will not have to get on a bus to learn those skills elsewhere.
“We’re excited, because it’s not only running those programmes for Year 7 but exposing the whole school to those experiences. They’ll already know how to use the kitchen and how to use a sewing machine by the time they get to Year 7 and the same with woodwork and hard materials.”
It also enables the school to integrate the different technologies into the curriculum and have the flexibility to do that when they want, she says.
The school has employed one extra permanent teacher this year, with three of the existing teachers sharing the teaching roles in the new facilities.
She says twenty Year 7 students have chosen to stay with the school this year and that takes the total roll to 244, which she expects to climb to about 275 by the end of the year.
For the next two years, families have the option of choosing to continue their children’s education at Wakefield School for Year 7 and 8 or enrol them at other schools. Then, Freya says, zoning will be introduced and school options will depend on available space at schools in another zone.
Appleby School is also planning to become a full primary school with Year 7 students joining the roll next year and Year 8 in 2026.
