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At the halfway point of a 10-year spurt in student numbers, the Education Ministry has added less than half the extra classrooms it said would be needed in high-growth areas, but more in other parts of the country.
The ministry forecast in 2019 that 100,000 additional pupil places would be required by 2030 in 39 high-growth areas and by the middle of this year had added 43,068 of those places - less than half.
It later forecast a need for 14,000 more places in other areas by 2030 and had so far added 17,804 for a total of 60,872 additional places since 2019, with more under construction.
"By the start of the 2026 school year (31 January) we are forecasting to have delivered 68,550 student places (48,634 in high growth catchments)," it said in a statement.
The ministry said its most recent forecast of growth between 2019-2030 totalling 1000,000 in the high-growth areas and 14,000 in other areas was updated in July 2023.
But the following year, 2024, the national school roll rose by a net 19,961 - one of the biggest single-year increases on record largely due to immigration and providing more than half of the net growth of 34,367 since 2019.
"While the quantum of growth has remained stable, there has been some variance across catchments with slightly less growth in the high-growth catchments and slightly more in others," the ministry said.
The ministry said new primary schools were scheduled to open in Ormiston and Rolleston next year and a new junior college for Y7-10 students in Chapel Downs in 2027.
It said more classrooms would be added to existing schools in both areas next year and in 2027.
The ministry also told RNZ it was trying to find land for 10 of 18 new schools that had not yet been prioritised and was actively looking for land in Beachlands and Kumeu
Growth hard to predict
Kyle Brewerton from the Auckland Primary Principals Association said its members' views on how well the ministry was keeping up with the growth varied.
He said growth in the city was difficult to predict and forecasts could be thrown by housing developments that moved faster or slower than expected.
"We had a case north of Auckland where a school was built to accommodate I think the maximum roll was about 600 and then the developments all stopped. So the ministry as such cannot control commercial development of neighbourhoods. In some cases more development was going in, in some cases there was less," he said.
Brewerton said an unexpected but common pattern was for new migrants to move into fast-growing communities, shift somewhere else after 18 months, but leave their children enrolled in the school.
Then a new family would move in with more children for the local school resulting in a single house providing twice as many enrolments as forecast, but repeated across many homes, he said.
"So one house, one dwelling was potentially creating multiple streams of families coming into the schools," he said.
Brewerton said last year the ministry provided about 60 teaching spaces in six months for the city's schools.
He said a move to prefabricated buildings helped speed up the process of building new classrooms and the introduction of standard designs would speed up new schools significantly.
Pokeno School principal Blair Johnston told RNZ a second primary school scheduled to open in the town in 2027 could not come soon enough.
Johnston said his school was bursting at the seams and had so little space that lunch times were staggered to avoid overcrowding in the outside areas.
He said the school was supposed to have a maximum of 600 pupils, but currently had 640 and was likely to reach 700 by the end of the year.
"We've needed a second primary school for quite some time because if our master plan is for a roll of 600 and we hit 650 last year, we're past the point of needing it. It should have been here already," he said.
"The ministry does have land within Pokeno that it's going to be building a second school. The timeline for that, I've been told that their aiming for that to be ready in 2027 however, I would have to say that my experience over the last 10 years with the ministry and their building projects, I'm not feeling very confident that it's gonna be ready by then."
Johnston said the high number of pupils put a lot of pressure on his school so it was "massively critical" the new school was ready on time.
What's coming for the fasting-growing areas
The Education Ministry said the following classrooms and schools had been approved for the fast-growing areas of Ormiston and Rolleston.
Ormiston:
Rolleston:
- Rolleston College - 29 short-term roll growth teaching spaces due by December; a 19 permanent teaching space expansion due for completion in January 2026; and an additional 12 permanent teaching spaces and administration block due January 2027.
- Te Rōhutu Whio - Six teaching space expansion expected July 2026.
- Te Rau Horopito - a new Year 1-8 primary school, under construction and due to open term 1, 2026.
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