Kuranui College

My experience at Kuranui College has been interesting... Bullying at this school has become less apparent to what I've seen over the years. But also, the quality of the teaching has dramatically decreased over the years... The school continues to focus on funding for things in the future and spend their money on the "new gym" will probably not be finished when I'm still here.

The problem with this school is that if you need help completing specific standards in a subject that the course doesn't offer, they don't give much help and guidance. And my previous experience when I was in Year 9 & Year 10 is that teachers never really knew how to control the students but just to kick them out of the classroom. The lack of support in all aspects of life such as academics, social life, mental wellbeing, and overall morale hinders the college's ability for students to thrive. However, in the past year the school has improved a little bit in these areas.

I have given Kuranui College a poor rating because my experience of the school between Year 9-10 and some of Year 11 was not the greatest. And hopefully they can take this criticism as an opportunity to improve if they ever see this. I will say that Kuranui College makes sure that kids can participate in extracurriculars at high school giving them an experience that will last into their adulthoods. They offer a unique system called "wanaga", also known as "inspire time". The point of inspire time is to help students develop their creativity, nurturement, and development in a changing world. However, some students have used this opportunity to waste their learning and use it for courses that do NOT nurture and inspire them outside of their abilities and teaches them nothing. An example of this, is a course that was called "Origami". This course was just folding paper and had no overall goal as students just utilized this time to talk. Additionally, I picked a class called "Science". Which was supposed to be about learning the science in practical experiments which seemed decent. However, the teacher had no idea what he was doing and took a very long time to get things for basic experiments and had troubling students he just told off the whole time which was a downfall. Wananga is held every Wednesday for two periods (over 2 hours long, 1 hour each session). They last for a term (9-11 weeks) until the student picks a new Wananga. So if the student does nothing and this for 2 hours every week in a term... They miss 18-22 hours of potential learning time to grow themselves as a person and improve their education and knowledge.

And finally, NCEA (soon to be replaced) has added an exam that grades you on Maths, Writing, and Reading. If I remember correctly, in 2023 CAA (the exams) results were around 40% for math, 50% for writing and just about 70% for reading which is concerning.

Kuranui College needs to seriously review the type of Wananga courses they put into for 2026 and improve the quality of teaching in real courses, otherwise students will continue to have a lower quality and understanding of the national curriculum and above.

I am deeply disappointed with my experience at Kuranui College. The bullying at this school is terrible, and despite their claims of being "harsh on bullying", they take NO action to address it. The Year 12 Dean was incredibly rude and engaged in victim-blaming, which only made the situation worse. Additionally, the school administration, including the Assistant Principal, is unresponsive to emails and fails to provide the support needed. They try to get you into the college when you enroll with promises of a safe environment and being harsh on bullying, but in reality, they do not follow through on their commitments.

There are lots of mean girls who give nasty looks and side eyes for no reason, making it a very gossipy and unfriendly environment. Everyone is standoffish and badly behaved. I would not recommend Kuranui College to anyone seeking a supportive and responsive educational environment.

Never send your child to this school from person experience of being student here it’s not worth it

Bad bullying, not too much of a grasp on the bign problems. Being called a f*ggot, r*tard and an “it” are a bit more important than whether or not a teacher should hunt down a student for clown makeup. Give us the independence that the school was designed to give us.