Site Tours

Site Tour 1: Educating Diverse Learners

On this tour, you will see three schools, two of which have been designed to cater for learners with diverse needs. Halswell School is residential, for students experiencing learning, behavioral and emotional needs. Students live at the school for a period of time. Waitaha School relocated and opened a newly built school in 2017. They offer education programmes for students with special needs aged 5 -21 years. Waitaha shares a site with Lemonwood Grove school which also is featured on this tour. Lemonwood Grove is a brand new mainstream school with an emphasis on play based learning. 

Site Tour 2: Inner City Contrasts

The schools we will visit in the inner-city  are very diverse contrasting the country’s oldest independent high school with the city’s only vertical high school. Cathedral Grammar is a private preschool and primary school (years 0-8) with award winning classroom and playground design. Christ’s College is a private boys school, founded in 1850. Ao Tawhiti moved into their new premises in 2019, a year 0-13 school vertical school in an inner city campus where the students have personalised learning.  

Site Tour 3: Catholic School Tours

On this tour you will see three Catholic schools, one boys secondary, one girls secondary and a newly formed primary school. The primary school was formed after a merger of two schools (on one school’s site).  All have a long history of serving their local communities and having strong values based education programmes.

Site Tour 4: Rolleston Schools

Rolleston is one of the fastest growing areas of New Zealand and has seen significant growth since the Christchurch earthquakes. Five new schools have been built since 2010. On this tour, you’ll see a brand new high school, and two primary schools. All feature innovative learning environments and a high level of collaborative teaching practice. These schools strongly reflect their cultural narratives as part of their design. 

Site Tour 5: Co-located Schools

As a result of the earthquakes two large single sex schools relocated from their original sites to a shared co-located site (11.5 hectares)  in May 2019. This tour will include the challenges and opportunities of setting up a co-location. Each school while maintaining its own separate teaching spaces also enjoys the benefits of combining shared areas in order to deliver efficiencies of scale that each school alone could not have provided e.g. a 750 seated auditorium. The schools are able to offer the students completely new experiences. An outdoor “hard technology” area allows students to undertake large projects including building garden sheds or decks for example.

Site Tour 6: New Build Progression- Primary Schools

On this tour, you will see three new schools, built since the Christchurch earthquakes. Halswell School was one of the first new school builds, replacing a damaged school, while Ararira Springs and Knightstream School are new schools built to meet changing population growth in their areas. You will see reflected in the different designs the difference in thinking about education delivery over the last 5 years that has occurred in the city. 

Site Tour 7: Maori Medium

This tour is a special visit to two schools who deliver the curriculum in the Māori language. Te Waka Unua is a brand new mainstream primary school with a bilingual unit. TKKM o Waitaha is a fully Māori immersion school that caters for Years 0-13.  You will be welcomed on to the school with a powhiri (a welcome ceremony).

Site Tour 8: Independent (Private) School Tour

This tour will take you to three independent schools that all offer boarding facilities. St Andrew's College, a private co-ed school Yr 0-13 , with a preschool has completed extensive building projects including an award winning Chapel. St Margaret's is a private girls school Yr0-13 with a co-ed preschool. They have a range of learning spaces in their new Winchester Precinct. Rangi Ruru is a private girls school Yrs 7-13. The library (Gibson Centre) and science building are of particular interest because of their innovative designs.

Site Tour 9: Eastside Early Adopters

While most schools in Christchurch are innovative in their practice Haeata is a brand new community campus catering for Years 0-13 learners who self-direct their learning, they view themselves as pioneers in Education. Waitākari School was one of the first schools built post-quake and has been teaching collaboratively in large open spaces for quite some time. The East of Christchurch was the area that had the largest disruption from the quakes and a lot of the area was ‘red zoned’ which meant the land was deemed unsuitable for housing.

Site Tour 10: New Primary builds in the East

Travelling to the East where the Earthquakes caused significant damage we will visit Rawhiti school which  is a brand new school created from the merger of three former schools post quake. It was opened in 2015. Marshland School used to be a smallish country school, it moved premises to a new subdivision and increased its role size considerably. Both schools teach collaboratively.

Site Tour 11: Hornby Schools

Travelling to the West of Christchurch is the suburb of Hornby. On this tour we will visit primary and secondary schools. South Hornby Primary school was completely rebuilt on a new site not far from the original site. Hornby Primary has refurbished rooms (and a bilingual unit). Hornby High is being almost completely rebuilt with stage one and two complete. A feature of the school is a technology ‘learning street’, their connected curriculum and a radical timetable change for years 7-9. 

Site Tour 12: Mainstream Inclusive Practice

The Port Hills lie to the South of Christchurch. Cashmere Primary sit on the lower levels of the hills and has a new two story classroom block where the teachers teach collaboratively. They also have refurbished classrooms. Beckenham School is on the flat and they are rebuilding most of the school in large learning spaces that can cater for teachers working collaboratively. Beckenham has strong inclusive education practices and they share the site with Ferndale Special School. Cashmere are developing their curriculum to have a stronger focus on wellbeing and inclusivity.

Site Tour 13: North Towns

Heading north of Christchurch we will visit two schools in small towns. Rangiora Township is a satellite town of Christchurch with 18 000 people. The high school has its own farm and they have built one of the biggest learning spaces in NZ which is the equivalent to 27 learning spaces. Pegasus is a new township that started establishing buildings approximately 14 years ago and is still under construction. The small school at Waikuku closed and relocated to Pegasus and the school was the first zero energy school in New Zealand.

Site Tour 14: Seaview Schools

Heading to the very East of Christchurch is the suburb of Sumner which has recently opened some new classrooms and have revisioned what a school library could be. Lyttleton School is a merger of two schools post quake. They have worked with their local performing arts community to share a performing arts space. 

Site Tour 15: Tertiary Buildings Innovations at UC

University of Canterbury has had to rebuild most of their campus. There are a range of exciting new spaces, the tour will take you to the Engineering Precinct, Rehua and the Rutherford Regional Science and Innovation Centre. 

Site Tour 16: Innovative Civic Attractions

A visit to the award winning library Tūranga and to the award winning child-designed biggest children’s playground in the Southern Hemisphere. Innovations and originality in civic spaces with strong cultural narrative references.

Site Tour 17: Tertiary Building Innovations ARA (Polytechnic)

ARA has recently opened two new state-of-the-art new buildings. Kahukura the new Engineering and Architectural Studies Building, located on the Madras Street Campus has used many sustainable building innovations. 

Manawa – is the new Nursing, Midwifery & Medical Imaging dual location building with the CDHB and University of Canterbury located on Antigua Street in the new Health Precinct.