Schools in Wanganui

[annalia@mweb.co.za]

Hi everyone

I hope to start working in Wanganui in January. Looking for some info /personal experience about schools in Wanganui. My son is14 years old. SA Grade 7? Will be working in Gonville medical centre (wherever that may be).

Would welcome any advice regarding areas to stay in the area as well

Thanx
Annalia

[mandyh]

Hi Annalia &  to the forum or should I say "big" family

Go to www.tki.org.nz and on the top right select "schools". Then find Wanganui and have a lot there.

The ERO reports that you'll find on schools will give you some idea of what they're like. NZ schools are rated by Decile - 1 being the more dependent on the government for funding while 10 being the highest and less needy of government funding.

There's also a section in the ERO report that will give you your ethnic population. 

When chosing schools here we relied on the above, www.schoolzones.co.nz as well as google maps - this helped us to find the best areas/school as most of your schools work according to school zones.

Good luck and hope this has been of some help to you.

[Ostrich]

Definitely read the ERO report on schools of interest. The deciles are very helpful, but tell you only a portion of the story. Some lower decile schools are very high performing with good reputations (ex. Avondale in Waitakere City is decile 4, but kids seem happy there and do well achievement wise), and others are higher decile with problems (like the decile 8 school in Wellington that made the news for it's bullying problem).

ERO Reports can be found following the links mandyh posted, or else looked up here:
http://www.ero.govt.nz

Wikipedia also has some really good lists of all schools by deciles, so you get a better sense of the neighborhood breakdown (I'm not sure where Wanganui is):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_schools_in_the_Auckland_Region

Good luck!

[annalia@mweb.co.za]

Thank you MandyH and Ostrich. Very helpfull sites indeed. Where is Wanganui....don't know yet, but will see when we get there. Have to follow the work-offer!

[mandyh]

"Where is Wanganui....don't know yet" - :-)

Have a look on Google maps - wonderful invaluable site to use.