92 | COMMUNITY Te Kura Whakatipu o Kawarau New primary school built and ready to roll T from page 90 While the school will cater for up to 950 it has an opening funded role of 225 with an expected 100 pupils starting the school year. “They’ve backed us and helped us not only with the name but our school values and our vision, and to create an identity that we’ll use throughout everything we do at the school,” says Gigi. “It’s exciting because I’ve lived here all my life and I haven’t known the Maori mythology, or the history of the area or what’s behind different placenames and so on, so it’s been really important. “We had a vision for the school that it should be “our place to gather, learn and grow”, and it happens to be a place where Maori used to do exactly that, so there have been some real synergies.” While the school will cater for up to 950 it has an opening funded role of 225 with an expected 100 pupils starting the school year. They are doing a full opening which means there will be students at every level from Year 1 to Year 8 in this school that was no more than a bare piece of land purchased by the Ministry of Education not quite two years ago. Their ministry liaison and governance advisor Cleve Hay had just been involved with setting up a new primary school in Wanaka. He was part of establishing their vision underpinned by the values of whanaungatanga (belonging), kotahitanga (unity), and manaakitanga (nurturing); setting up a hui with seven local representatives of the iwi led by Darren Rewi, and organising a tour of primary schools in Christchurch which, luckily, happened just before the country went into its first nationwide lockdown. The board took those combined learnings, together with the potential of the school site they were building on, and worked with the construction company Southbase - who would be delivering the buildings - architects, surveyors, project managers and ministry people to come up with a shape for the school with the given budget determined by the ministry. “We felt really heard throughout the design process,” says Gigi. “ We knew it had to be an innovative learning environment, that was a given, and we knew we needed a two-storey building to maximize the outdoor space for the pupils and our final design reflects all of that.” With a large school hall, a separate, easy access administration and library block, and classrooms designed to cater for the different ages and needs of junior, middle and senior school learning respectively, they still managed to build with half an eye on how future needs might change; “It’s truly flexible and innovative in the sense you can open it all up or you can actually slide some doors and have three separate teaching areas,” says igi. “We’ve all been in education long enough to know that the trend goes around in a cycle so we wanted to fit the students and their needs now, but future-proof it as well.” For now though as the school opens its doors for the first time, there’s a staff of enthusiastic teachers on board looking forward to being part of a place of learning. One where the stories of their predecessors both European and Maori will be shared by people gathering together in these new suburbs, and where they can unite in their goal to - as Gigi puts it - “grow children to become amazing human beings.” T: 03 366 1777 • E: engineering@pfc.co.nz • W: www.pfc.co.nz Structural • Mechanical • Electrical Fire • Civil • Hydraulic • Acoustic Powell Fenwick is proud to have provided engineering services for Te Kura Whakatipu o Kawarau Proud supplier of Te KuraWhakatipu o Kawarau irrigation system
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