Education
The first Catholic School in New Zealand was opened in 1840, the year the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, at Kororareka and was called St Peter's School. Initially Catholic missionaries, led by Bishop Pompallier, focused on schools for Māori. It was therefore Catholic laymen who in 1841 established a school for the sons of settlers. This school was Auckland's first school of any sort. In 1877, the new central government passed a secular Education Act and the Church decided to establish its own network of schools. The system expanded rapidly. All Catholic schools are now integrated into the State system of education under the Private Schools Conditional Integration Act 1975. This means that all the operating costs of the schools are met by the Government of New Zealand, although the site and buildings continue to be owned by the local bishop or a religious order
In 2010, there were 190 Catholic primary schools in New Zealand and 49 secondary schools. Around 64,000 students were enrolled in 2008, or 11 percent of all students in the New Zealand school system. Academically, the schools do very well. Between 1994 and 2010, the rolls in Catholic schools increased by almost 22 percent. The New Zealand Catholic Education Office assists in the running of Catholic schools in New Zealand.
Read more about this topic: Roman Catholicism In New Zealand
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“If we help an educated man’s daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war?—not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“There are words in that letter to his wife, respecting the education of his daughters, which deserve to be framed and hung over every mantelpiece in the land. Compare this earnest wisdom with that of Poor Richard.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“One of the greatest faults of the women of the present time is a silly fear of things, and one object of the education of girls should be to give them knowledge of what things are really dangerous.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)