Cashmere High School ( mi, Te iringa o Kahukura) is a state coeducational secondary school, located in southern
Christchurch
Christchurch ( ; mi, Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Canterbury Region. Christchurch lies on the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula on Pegasus Bay. The Avon Rive ...
, New Zealand. It was opened in 1956 in response to population growth in southern Christchurch during the 1950s.
The school is located in the suburb of
Cashmere, New Zealand, on the northern bank of the
Heathcote River overlooked by the
Cashmere Hills. Serving Years 9 to 13, Cashmere has a roll of students as of , making it the third-largest school in Christchurch.
History
The Cabinet approved construction of Cashmere High School on 15 March 1954. Tender for the construction of the school, initially accommodating 600 pupils, opened on 1 June 1954 and closed on 6 July. After the initial tenders were rejected and fresh tenders were called, construction was let in late October to P. Graham and Sons Ltd for
£170,000. Construction of the school began on 26 October 1954.
Terry McCombs, a former Member of the
New Zealand House of Representatives who had served as
Minister of Education from 1947 to 1949, was appointed as the school's foundation headmaster in August 1955.
Cashmere High School opened to students on 1 February 1956, with an initial intake of 190 third-form (now Year 9) students. The school was officially opened on 29 November 1956 by Minister of Education
Ronald Algie
Sir Ronald Macmillan Algie (22 October 1888 – 23 July 1978) was a New Zealand politician who served as Speaker of the House of Representatives for six years in the 1960s. He described himself as "a Tory in the old tradition".
Early life
Alg ...
.
Cashmere suffered moderate damage in the 22 February
2011 Christchurch earthquake
A major earthquake occurred in Christchurch on Tuesday 22 February 2011 at 12:51 p.m. local time (23:51 UTC, 21 February). The () earthquake struck the entire of the Canterbury region in the South Island, centred south-east ...
, mainly from
liquefaction.
On the day, the school had closed for instruction for the day at 12:00 pm due to the
Post Primary Teachers' Association, the main secondary school teachers' trade union, holding a paid union meeting that afternoon, meaning very few students and staff were on site when the quake struck at 12:51 pm. The school reopened on 14 March after the school buildings were inspected and deemed safe, and essential repairs and temporary fixes had been carried out.
In the aftermath of the earthquake, the school played host to
Linwood College in a site sharing agreement while Linwood's severely damaged facilities were inspected and repaired. Cashmere used the site in the morning, while Linwood used the site in the afternoon for five months, until Linwood College moved back to its original site on 1 August.
The current principal, Joe Eccleton, replaced Mark Wilson in July 2019.
Enrolment
Cashmere operates an
enrolment scheme to help curb roll numbers and prevent overcrowding. The school's home zone, in which students residing are automatically entitled to be enrolled without rejection, covers the southern suburbs of Christchurch as well as the settlements around the western and southern shores of
Lyttelton Harbour. Suburbs and towns within the zone include
Beckenham
Beckenham () is a town in Greater London, England, within the London Borough of Bromley, in Greater London. Until 1965 it was part of the historic county of Kent. It is located south-east of Charing Cross, situated north of Elmers End and E ...
,
Cashmere,
Huntsbury,
Murray Aynsley,
Saint Martins, Somerfield,
Spreydon,
Sydenham Sydenham may refer to:
Places Australia
* Sydenham, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney
** Sydenham railway station, Sydney
* Sydenham, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne
** Sydenham railway line, the name of the Sunbury railway line, Melbourne ...
, and
Westmorland
Westmorland (, formerly also spelt ''Westmoreland'';R. Wilkinson The British Isles, Sheet The British IslesVision of Britain/ref> is a historic county in North West England spanning the southern Lake District and the northern Dales. It had an ...
; parts of
Addington and
Hoon Hay;
Hillsborough,
Opawa
Opawa is an inner suburb of Christchurch, New Zealand, located 2.5 kilometres south-east of the city centre.
The name is a contraction of "Ōpāwaho", which, in Māori, means a place of ('ō') an outer '' pā'' or outpost ('pāwaho'). "Ōpāw ...
and
Waltham west of
State Highway 76; and
Governors Bay
Governors Bay is a small town in Canterbury, New Zealand.
Geography
The settlement of Governors Bay is located on Banks Peninsula near the head of Lyttelton Harbour. It is connected via Governors Bay Road to Lyttelton, via Dyers Pass Road o ...
,
Diamond Harbour, and
Port Levy. Students residing outside the zone are accepted as roll places allow per the enrolment scheme order of preference and secret ballot.
At the October 2013
Education Review Office
The Education Review Office (ERO) (Māori
Māori or Maori can refer to:
Relating to the Māori people
* Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group
* Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand
* Māori culture ...
(ERO) review, Cashmere had 1666 students enrolled, including 46
international student
International students, or foreign students, are students who undertake all or part of their tertiary education in a country other than their own and move to that country for the purpose of studying.
In 2019, there were over 6 million internati ...
s. There was an even number of male and female students. Seventy-five percent of students identified as
New Zealand European
European New Zealanders, also known by the Māori-language loanword Pākehā, are New Zealanders of European descent. Most European New Zealanders are of British and Irish ancestry, with significantly smaller percentages of other European a ...
(Pākehā), nine percent as
Māori
Māori or Maori can refer to:
Relating to the Māori people
* Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group
* Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand
* Māori culture
* Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the C ...
, three percent each as
Asian, and
Pacific Islanders
Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the Pacific Islands. As an ethnic/ racial term, it is used to describe the original peoples—inhabitants and diasporas—of any of the three major subregions of Oce ...
, and ten percent as another ethnicity.
Academics
Cashmere High School operates a regular timetable with five 55-minute teaching periods per day, except on Wednesdays where teaching periods are only 50 minutes each.
In Year 9,
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
,
Mathematics, Science,
Social Studies,
Physical Education
Physical education, often abbreviated to Phys Ed. or P.E., is a subject taught in schools around the world. It is usually taught during primary and secondary education, and encourages psychomotor learning by using a play and movement explorat ...
and
Health
Health, according to the World Health Organization, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".World Health Organization. (2006)''Constitution of the World Health Organiza ...
are compulsory and are studied for the whole year, while students rotate through four Technology subjects: Design Technologies, Graphic Communication, Materials and Electronics and Control, and Food Technology, studying one of them per school term. Students choose two Arts options out of
Visual Art
The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts ...
, Drama and Music to study for two terms each, and a
Foreign Language
A foreign language is a language that is not an official language of, nor typically spoken in, a given country, and that native speakers from that country must usually acquire through conscious learning - be this through language lessons at school ...
option out of French, Japanese,
Te Reo Māori and Spanish. There are no optional subjects.
In Year 10, English, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Physical Education and Health remain compulsory subjects. Students elect between two and four optional subjects to fill the two remaining subject lines on their timetable – either two full-year subjects, a full-year and two half-year subjects, or four half-year subjects.
In Years 11 to 13, students complete the
National Certificate of Educational Achievement
The National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) is the official secondary-school qualification in New Zealand. Phased in between 2002 and 2004, it replaced three older secondary-school qualifications. The New Zealand Qualifications Au ...
(NCEA), the main secondary school qualification in New Zealand. Levels 1, 2 and 3 of NCEA are usually completed in years 11, 12 and 13 respectively, although students can choose subjects from different levels depending on their progress through the NCEA level system. Students study six subjects per year (five in Year 13), with English being compulsory in Years 11 and 12, and Mathematics and Science being compulsory in Year 11.
In 2013, 91.4 percent of students leaving Cashmere High held at least NCEA Level 1, 79.6 percent held at least NCEA Level 2, and 54.0 percent held at least University Entrance. This compares nationally to 85.2%, 74.2%, and 49.0% respectively.
Conductive education
The school has a
conductive education
Conductive Education (CE) is an educational system, based on the work of Hungarian Professor András Pető, that has been specifically developed for children and adults who have motor disorders of neurological origin such as cerebral palsy.
CE i ...
unit, which opened in 2002, and caters for up to 20 secondary school-aged students.
Co-curricular
School houses
Cashmere has six school houses into which students are grouped, each is named after a notable New Zealander.
Notable alumni
*
Ben Campbell – member of the band "
Zed
Zed is the pronunciation of the letter ''Z'' in Commonwealth English ("zee" in American English).
Zed or ZED may also refer to:
Entertainment Characters
*Zed (comics), a character from the ''Hellblazer'' comic series
*Zed (Kiba), the main chara ...
" and later
Atlas
An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth.
Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geograp ...
*
Greg Draper – football (soccer) player
*
Guyon Espiner – TV personality and political editor for
TVNZ
*
Stephen Fleming
Stephen Paul Fleming (born 1 April 1973) is a New Zealand cricket coach and former captain of the New Zealand national cricket team, who is the current head coach of Indian Premier League team Chennai Super Kings. He is considered one of the g ...
– cricketer
*
Alex Frame – track cyclist
*
Mike Gilchrist – runner that represented NZ at Commonwealth games in 1986
*
Lucy Gray
"Lucy Gray" is a poem written by William Wordsworth in 1799 and published in his ''Lyrical Ballads''. It describes the death of a young girl named Lucy Gray, who went out one evening into a storm.
Lucy Gray gives her name to the lead female cha ...
– climate change activist (not an alumna but a current student)
*
Nathan King – member of the band "Zed"
*
Steve McCabe (1980 -1984) – songwriter / musician notable for work with
The Axemen in Christchurch and solo and collective work elsewhere in New Zealand and across the world.
* Adrian Palmer – member of the band "Zed"
*
Bob Parker (–1970) –
Mayor of Christchurch
The Mayor of Christchurch is the head of the municipal government of Christchurch, New Zealand, and presides over the Christchurch City Council. The mayor is directly elected using a First Past the Post electoral system. The current mayor, Ph ...
(2007–13)
*
Bic Runga
Briolette Kah Bic Runga (born 13 January 1976), recording as Bic Runga, is a New Zealand singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist pop artist. Her first three studio albums debuted at number one on the New Zealand Top 40 Album charts. Runga ...
(1989–93) – singer
*
Ethan Rusbatch
Ethan Rusbatch (born 24 May 1992) is a New Zealand basketball player for the Franklin Bulls of the New Zealand National Basketball League (NZNBL). He began his New Zealand NBL career in 2012 with the Southland Sharks after spending one season ...
(2005–09) – basketball player
*
Jack Tame
Jack Renfrey Tame (born March 1987) is a television and radio journalist and presenter. He is the host of TVNZ’s political show Q+A, and a presenter at Newstalk ZB''.
Early life
Tame was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, the son of Golden Ba ...
, TV and radio host
*
Yulia Townsend – singer
*
Richard Wilson – football (soccer) player
*
Luke Di Somma
Luke Di Somma is a New Zealand lyricist, composer, writer and director. He studied at the University of Canterbury, the New Zealand School of Music and the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Tisch School of the Arts. His punk-rock m ...
– lyricist, composer, writer and director
*
Susan Wakefield (foundation pupil) – tax expert, philanthropist
References
External links
Education Review Office (ERO) reports
{{Schools in Canterbury
Educational institutions established in 1956
1956 establishments in New Zealand
Secondary schools in Christchurch
Conductive education schools
Special schools in New Zealand