Stuff: What you get when no-one is focused on the common interest

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Bad urban planning. Classrooms lying empty in low-decile schools. A looming gap between rich and poor. The debate over education in Porirua East is a microcosm of modern suburban life, of New Zealand as we now know it.

The locus of this complex story is the Aotea Block, an expensive new ridgeline subdivision in Porirua East, where homes can sell for over $2 million. In a textbook example of inequality, its shiny new residences are perched high above the mouldering state houses of Cannons Creek.

A few years back, Block residents thought the subdivision would get its own primary school, something they greatly desire. But the Ministry of Education has quite rightly ruled it out. The suburb has grown more slowly than expected, and, crucially, there are at least eight primary schools in Cannons Creek and nearby Waitangirua, many with empty classrooms.

So why aren’t Block parents sending their kids to these schools? They are nervous, for one thing, about the challenges facing these predominantly low-decile establishments. Speaking to Block residents, I’ve heard understandable concerns that such schools may have worse facilities, struggle to retain the best staff, or enrol disproportionately troubled students who consume teachers’ attention. On the other hand, I myself attended exactly that kind of school, and found it an immensely rewarding – and academically successful – experience.

It is hard not to wonder if these schools’ large Māori and Pasifika intakes don’t play a role in parental decisions. New Zealand, after all, is a country shaped by the ‘white flight’ of parents who, in the two decades to 2013, took a staggering 70,000 Pākehā kids out of decile 1 schools. (I rather doubt the trend has reversed since then.)

In Porirua today, some 700 families bypass local schools in favour of the city’s more “desirable” northern establishments. And many of the excuses for doing so are unconvincing.

On the Block’s Facebook group, parents claim to favour decile 9 Papakowhai School in the north because it’s “closer” than decile 2 Rangikura – even though a quick glance at a map proves otherwise. (Rangikura, incidentally, gets glowing official reviews.) Other parents say they are happy to detour to Tawa’s decile 10 Redwood School on their way to work in Wellington, but – again – will not drive the few kilometres to Rangikura.

Even if there are valid reasons in individual cases, I have misgivings about the wider picture. As one sceptical person put it on Facebook: “If Aotea residents will go ‘out of their way’ to go to Countdown Aotea, how come they can’t handle another couple of km to go to Rangikura or Tairangi [school]? I think the elephant in the room here is people not wanting their child to go to schools based on a certain school’s suburb.” One local educator, speaking to me anonymously, makes a blunter argument: “There is no doubt in my mind that laced all the way through here is prejudice and racism and inequity.”

Also detectable is a consumerist mindset among parents: a view that you buy the “right” home zoned for the “right” school with the “right” classmates. It’s a long way from the traditional ethos that a local school is a community asset, one to be cherished and strengthened. Christchurch woman Stacy Silich, interviewed by Stuff a few years back, embodied that ethos, saying: “If my local school isn’t good enough for my children, then surely it isn’t good enough for any child. [And] if that’s the case, we should be investing in our school community to help them be the best they can be – not using our privilege to get into another school, but using our time, skills, voice and energy into strengthening our local schools.”

On the other hand, Block residents do deserve some sympathy. As rising mortgage costs and grocery bills force parents back into work, few are left with time to serve on a school board.

These parents are, what’s more, the victims of poor urban planning. At one stage in the subdivision’s development, a road connecting it to Cannons Creek was proposed, only to be dismissed as having “little strategic value”. This leaves the Block cut off from the suburbs below, a situation not helped by an inadequate bus service. To get to most nearby schools, parents would have to drive their kids the long way round, adding to traffic and carbon emissions.

The last time I visited, the Block had virtually no collective infrastructure: no community centre, no church hall, almost nowhere to build connections and create a shared life. No wonder parents desperately seek a school as some kind of local hub. The Block, in short, is what you get when urban form is left largely in the hands of private developers, and no-one is looking after collective goods like community centres and high-quality public transport. A neglect of the common interest lies at the heart of so many of our problems.