Pegasus Post: June 28, 2016
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24<br />
Tuesday <strong>June</strong> <strong>28</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
SECONDARY SCHOOL SELECTION<br />
[Edition datE]<br />
PEGASUS POST<br />
3<br />
New Christchurch schools<br />
to offer students more<br />
AVoNSIDE GIrLS’ and Shirley Boys’ will<br />
be the first single sex secondary schools in<br />
New Zealand’s history to share a campus<br />
– an arrangement their principals say will<br />
enable the schools to offer their students<br />
new opportunities.<br />
The schools are to be built on part of<br />
QEII Park, next to the Christchurch City<br />
Council’s Eastern recreation and Sport<br />
Centre.<br />
Avonside Girls’ High School Principal<br />
Sue Hume says the campus will be brand<br />
new and state of the art.<br />
“Each school will have its own teaching<br />
spaces and students will spend most of<br />
their day in a single sex environment.<br />
That’s important to us. research shows<br />
that single sex education benefits both girls<br />
and boys…boys do better academically<br />
and girls participate more. That’s because<br />
they have space to learn and focus away<br />
from the opposite gender,” says Sue Hume.<br />
John Laurenson says the new campus is<br />
a step forward.<br />
“Because we are going to work together,<br />
we’ll be able to offer more. For example,<br />
we’ll be sharing some facilities, including<br />
a performing arts auditorium, theatre<br />
and cultural space, which enables us to<br />
build bigger and better assets,” says John<br />
Laurenson.<br />
Another benefit is that the students<br />
will be able to interact with and learn<br />
alongside peers from their partner school.<br />
“Students from both schools will share<br />
buses to and from the campus, they’ll all<br />
be able to use the café, our new library<br />
and learning centre and our other shared<br />
facilities. This means that not only will<br />
they have all the benefits of a single sex<br />
education, they’ll have social opportunities<br />
not available at other single sex schools,”<br />
says Sue Hume.<br />
The Ministry of Education is currently<br />
working on how the new schools will<br />
be zoned but the schools are focusing<br />
on catering to residents who live east of<br />
Colombo Street.<br />
“Because we will be servicing a wide<br />
area, we will be establishing a network of<br />
buses to service the campus,” says John<br />
Laurenson.<br />
Best of all, Sue Hume says the new<br />
campus will open in 2019 so is not too far<br />
away.<br />
“In fact many of our current students<br />
will be making the journey to the new<br />
campus with us and those who join our<br />
schools in the next two years will spend<br />
their senior years there. It’s been a long<br />
and sometimes hard road to get to the<br />
new campus, but we are confident we’re on<br />
track to create something even better than<br />
what we had before the earthquakes.”<br />
John Laurenson and Sue Hume<br />
Year 9 students at work in Ngatahi<br />
SECONDARY SCHOOL SELECTION