School History

Timeline

1901: District High School. Principal: Mr Strack. 20 secondary students. South Road site.

1910: HTHS opened. Princes St site (where the Police Station is today). The building was later used for manual training. Principal: Mr A. Gray. 180 students.

1920: Boarding establishment for 25 boys.

1921: HTHS opened on present Camberwell Rd site. 180 studetns, 11 staff.

1928: 346 students

1933: Boys hostel closed

1941: Assembly Hall completed

1943: 285 students

1946: School gymnasium shifted onto the site from Bell Block Aerodrome.

1954: Laurensen Block opened. 505 students, 21 staff

1955: School baths opened. 815 students

1960: 900 students

1964: 1000 students

1969: 22 prefabricated buildings on the site.

1972: West Block (Te Raumanui) opened. 1198 students, 55 staff.

1973: Over 1200 students, 60 staff.

1974 East Block became Dixon Block.

1975 Senior Studies Block became Gray Block.

1976: Senior Studies Block (Dixon) opened, 1298 students, 65 staff.

1977: New gymnasium opened. Assembly Hall re-opened after upgrading.

1978: Administration Block opened.

1980's: Sports Hall opened.

1987: Fire in Laurensen Block led to resiting food and fabric technology to Te Raumanui Block. Prefab rooms in Bayley Park during rebuilding. Computer rooms provided to replace old typing areas.

The Beginnings of Hawera High School

The growth of Hawera High School reflects much of the story of Hawera and its surrounding district. Its changes reflect the changes in the social and economic times of the past ninety years. The school has its origins in the primary school established in 1875, its transition into a District High School in 1901 and the demand for a Technical School in the next few years.

The school was born out of many strands of opinion expressed both locally and in the Parliament of the day. For many people, a High School was an irrelevancy. They thought that their children might be educated to become unsuitable for taking up the occupations on the land and in town. A small number of other people would continue to send their children away to various boarding schools that suited their pockets or ambitions, and for most Maori, this was not part of their expectations.

For those other people who saw that a High School education was a requirement for later vocational success for their children, the establishment of a Technical High School that prepared children for the national examinations and gave them understandings of commercial and technical practice, was vital to their future and their town.

IIn 1919 the school opened at the Technical School building in Princes Street and two years later moved to a new site in Camberwell Road. The School opened with a roll of 180, an advance on the District High School Secondary Department of 34 just two years before. The new school drew on a wide country district with many pupils arriving by trains from Eltham and Patea. An initial staff of eleven taught a range of subjects grouped into Courses: Literary, Commercial, Domestic Science, Engineering and Agriculture. The Literary and Commercial Courses led to the national examinations and were followed by 80% of the students. Agriculture seems never to have been a popular Course. It must be borne in mind that until the 1940s, large numbers of pupils left school at standard 6 and went directly into farm or domestic work.

The need to prove academic success was no doubt in the mind of both the staff and students. Scholarships and examination successes were soon taken and confirmed the community’s confidence in their school. In the 1930s, about 38% of the pupils had been over two years in the school: a much larger proportion than other secondary schools and three times that of most Technical Schools. This reveals something of the esteem in which secondary schooling was held in Hawera. A student from the time says “All seven of us went to the Hawera High School – how he (my father) managed it I shall never know.” Members of that family went on to gain considerable academic success.

The teachers of the school have enriched the life of the community and prominent local people have taken part in the life of the school, such as the contribution to school music made by HCA Fox from 1929 to 1945.

As universal secondary schooling was achieved in the 1940s, the school roll and its Curriculum changed. At the end of the 1930s the school catered for about 400 pupils but many factors contributed to a roll increase of nearly three times by 1970, making the school one of the largest of its kind at that time. As secondary schools were established in Patea and Opunake, the school’s district has altered and with all pupils now spending three or more years in the school, both its role and relationship with the community is greatly changed from that of catering for a fortunate 180 pupils in 1919.

Adult education has been a feature of the school. As far back as 1909, the Technical School provided both day and evening classes for adult students. In 1930 Evening Classes were re-established and have become a feature of the High School’s role in the community. In more recent times the Taranaki Polytechnic has developed on some areas of the provision of adult education that had developed at Hawera High School.

The changing South Taranaki community will continue to be reflected in the changes that will be seen in the Hawera High School in the fourth quarter of its first century.

Arthur Fryer
Published in the Hawera High School Jubilee Magazine, 1994

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