The Ministry of Education is supporting Cambridge Middle School to plan ahead for future roll growth, says principal Daryl Gibbs.
The school was under a tight squeeze when he arrived in 2018, when students were shoehorned into every available space.
Daryl Gibbs
“At our worst, over in the technology building, our woodwork and metalwork rooms were repurposed as classrooms, a foyer that joins all the specialist areas together was a classroom, and what is a smallish teacher resource room had to be cleared out and used as a classroom for two years as well,” he said.
Six new roll growth classrooms had been completed since 2018.
“Midway through 2023 was the first time we had every student in a genuine classroom teaching space since I started,” Gibbs said.
The roll grew from just under 500 students in 2017 to a peak of 730 in 2019.
“Today we’re sitting just under 700, so we’re pretty stable at the moment – and probably will be for another year before we start to grow gradually again.
“The big growth for us potentially will be when/if the new school opens… it could contribute to us 80-100 students a year. But obviously that’s been pushed out a couple of years, so I don’t expect that to impact us probably until closer to the end of this decade.”
He said the school finally had breathing room to plan ahead, rather than “being a long way behind”.
“The ministry have supported us to plan ahead, whereas in the past they wouldn’t really build on predicted growth,” he said. “But due to centralised statistics I guess, and numbers, they’ve earmarked Cambridge as a significant growth area.”
Work to build new technology classrooms and refurbish existing specialist teaching spaces began last week.
The new block will contain purpose-built spaces for teaching science, biotechnology/horticulture, digital design and hard materials.
