The wait was worth it

Cambridge High School principal Greg Thornton (centre) celebrates S Block’s opening with Ngāti Korokī Kahukura representatives (from left) Rangipuhi King, Harry Wilson, Eugene Kara and Karaitiana Tamatea. Photo: Steph Bell-Jenkins.

About 70 people gathered to celebrate the opening of Cambridge High School’s new classroom block on Monday.

The $12.4 million S Block, constructed by Livingstone Building, adds 15 new classrooms to the Swayne Rd campus and can accommodate more than 370 students.

School staff members, student leaders, Board of Trustees members, Ministry of Education officials and iwi representatives were among those at the opening, where Harry Wilson, Karaitiana Tamatea and Rangipuhi King led a blessing ceremony on behalf of Ngāti Korokī Kahukura and Ngāti Hauā.

Principal Greg Thornton was delighted the facility, approved by the Ministry of Education in 2015, had finally been completed.

“I think about what it’s going to open up for students now and in the future is just incredible,” he said.  “It’s taken a long time to get here but it’s been worth it.  It’s a wonderful building that will add a lot to the school.”

S Block, which is u-shaped, stands near the gym and contains dedicated spaces for music, art, media, digital technology, electronics and careers, and classrooms for students who need extra learning support.

Harry Wilson (centre) blesses Cambridge High School’s new building, S Block, on Monday morning as he leads guests through the facility. Photo: Steph Bell-Jenkins.

Its rear exterior wall features art by Ngāti Korokī Kahukura artist Eugene Kara, which was sandblasted into the concrete using metal stencils.  His design draws inspiration from Māori patterns including poutama, which he said represented “one’s journey through life and one’s journey towards attaining knowledge”.

S Block is 8.9m high, has a 1122m2 footprint and is made of 200mm precast concrete and structural steel.  Its construction began on September 12 last year.

It replaces a building of the same name, which was demolished in 2020 because it was “no longer fit for purpose”, the school’s business manager Amanda Wright said.

The original S Block contained 11 classrooms but four more were added into the new building’s design to accommodate roll growth.

Thornton said the project was approved in 2015 and was expected to be completed by 2018, but its specialist spaces had made the design problematic.

“The initial architects tried to make some statements with earlier designs which didn’t align with ministry requirements, causing budget challenges and the delaying of approval,” he said.

However, he was “delighted with the attention and support” the school had recently received from the ministry to get the facility finished.

Twenty-one pre-fabricated classrooms have been added to the school since the project was approved in 2015 – 11 to cover spaces lost when the original S Block was demolished, and an extra 10 to accommodate roll growth.

Principal Greg Thornton thanks the school’s business manager Amanda Wright for her crucial contribution to the S Block project. Photo: Steph Bell-Jenkins.

Thornton said the extra 15 classrooms freed up by S Block’s opening would be needed immediately so weather-tightness work, expected to take up to two years to complete, could be carried out on two other blocks.

Meanwhile, the school was planning to begin building a 10-classroom block in two years’ time.

“That should be just in time to cater for population growth,” Thornton said.

“The planning that we’ve done has been towards about 2300 students by 2030.”

The school’s longer-term plan was to remove temporary classrooms and build two-storey blocks in their place while preserving existing field space.

Figures obtained from the Ministry of Education show Cambridge High School’s roll grew by 126 students from 1432 to 1558 in the five years to 2018.  It has increased by another 208 over the past five years, bringing the roll to 1766.

Wright expects that number to swell to 2100 over the next five years.

Jocelyn Mikaere, deputy secretary for the Ministry of Education’s Te Tai Whenua (central) region, said Cambridge High School had “seen an upward trend of consistent growth over the past 10 years when compared to other high schools in Waikato”.

“This is due to a number of factors, including population growth and strong housing development in and around the township,” she said.

“The other high schools in the region have maintained consistent roll numbers, whereas Cambridge High School has shown consistent growth. This trend is projected to continue for the next 20 years, though this is dependent on the continued housing developments in the Cambridge area.”

The Ministry had developed a plan to help the school accommodate this growth, she said.