Collingwood Area School

Collingwood Area School (Māori: Te Kura o Aorere) is an area school in the Golden Bay / Mohua town of Collingwood in New Zealand. The school dates back to 1859, when it was founded as Collingwood School. It was known as Collingwood District High School from 1937 to 1978.

Collingwood Area School Te Kura o Aorere
Waharoa (entrance structure) of school
Address
Lewis Street, Collingwood 7073 New Zealand
Coordinates	40°40′57″S 172°40′46″E
Information
School type	Government-funded, area school
Motto	Māori: Ka eke ngātahi tātou i te ngaru o te angitu (Together we ride the wave of lifelong success)
Opened	1859; 166 years ago (1859)
Status	Open
Ministry of Education Institution no.	290
Principal	Hugh Gully
Gender	Co-educational
Age range	Years 1–13
School roll	151[1] (July 2025)
Language	English
Colour(s)	Gold and black
Website	www.collingwood-area.school.nz

History

The second Collingwood School building in 1889

A few months after the beginning of the 1856 gold rush in Collingwood, parents were already petitioning the Nelson Board of Education for a school to be set up. Collingwood was established as a school district in 1858, and the school was established in 1859 as Collingwood School, at a cost of £150; the head of the school, John Edward Neame, was on a salary of £108, with an assistant mistress on a salary of £24.^[2] The school building on Lewis Street was near the site of the present school; the decayed 1859 schoolhouse was replaced in 1880 by a building with an ornamental belfry and large porch.^[2]

In 1936, it expanded to include a class for secondary students, with an initial roll of 12, and the following year it became a district high school. In 1978, it became an area school, and undertook a major reconstruction with many new buildings, including a new primary classroom and administration block, at a cost of $265,750.^[3] Area schools, found in rural areas of New Zealand, educate years 1 to 13, with teachers able to work with any children in that range.^[3]

The school has a roll of 151 as of July 2025.^[1] In 2023, the school undertook a $9 million upgrade that included 10 new classrooms, a library, and technology, science and administration buildings, as well as a revamp of the school gym.^[4]

School bell

School photo, 1889

School photo, 1904

The school's original bell was lost in the 1920s. In 1964, Rear Admiral Richard Washbourn, who had close family connections with Golden Bay, bought the bell of HMS Chevron from the Rosyth Dockyard for £8, and donated it to the school the following year. Washbourn wrote at the time that "Collingwood is a very remote little settlement one hundred miles from the nearest town and it will do the young good to have some reminder of the world outside.....even if that reminder only serves the mundane purpose of calling them to their studies".^[5]

Notable staff

• Philip Woollaston – politician^[6]

Principals

The following is an incomplete list of headmasters and principals of Collingwood School, Collingwood District High School and Collingwood Area School.

No.	Name	Term
1	John Neame	1859–1861[3]
	Francis O'Sullivan	1869–1875[2]
	Ezra Brook Dixon	1875–1876[7]
	Edward Canavan	fl. 1878[8]
	Joseph William Humphreys	fl. 1880[9]
	Mr Anderson	fl. 1885[10]
	Alfred Thomas White	1898–1903[11][12]
	Herbert Basil Score Sanders	1904–1911[13][14]
	Hollis Hill	?–1934[15]
	Arthur Osborne Stanley	1936–1939[16][17]
	George Henry Ralph	1939–1948[18][19]
	James A. Hook	1948–?[20]
	Janelle Mckenzie	2014–2016[21]
	Caroline Gray	2016–2018[22]
	Hugh Gully	2019–present[22]