Zone Out: How high (and climbing) house prices are affecting school enrolments

Saturday, 22 March 2025

Naenae Primary School longtime principal Murray Bootten discusses the problems rising house prices are causing.

Lessons are being taught in rooms that were once offices, including one that is so small it’s nicknamed “the cupboard”.

Because the actual cupboards are, in turn, full, equipment has to be stacked up in the corridors – which are also crammed with little bodies as children collect their bags when the bell rings.

Naenae Primary School is bursting at the seams.

Its roll has more than doubled over the past decade. In July 2014, the school had 144 pupils. Last July, enrolments had jumped to 330.

“I’m sure that growth won’t continue– I hope it won't continue, because we’ve got nowhere to put the children,” says longtime principal Murray Bootten.

With the hall out of action because the roof is being replaced, the library is being used for assemblies and other gatherings (before two prefab buildings were brought in in 2024 it was being used as a teaching space).

Naenae Primary School in a hallway, which is used to store equipment as the cupboards are full.

For many of the tamariki who attend the school, the conditions at home are just as cramped, Bootten says.

“[There are] families living in motels, sharing a garage in the back of somebody’s property – the worst case scenarios we’ve come across.”

Behind both trends there seems to be one common factor: the cost of housing.

The Post is investigating the relationship between property prices and school enrolments at primaries across wider Wellington through a six-part series called Zone Out.

Our analysis, using data from the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ) and Ministry of Education statistics, has found that there is a positive correlation.

Naenae Primary was the second fastest growing in the region (behind only Mākara Model school) while some schools in the most expensive suburbs, such as Worser Bay, have seen a significant decline in enrolments.

The REINZ figures showed that the median sales price for homes within the Naenae School zone was $260,000 in the year to July 2014.

Ten years later, the average value had risen by 149% to $648,250.

While that’s still $120,000 less than the median price for wider Wellington, whether or not it’s “affordable” is relative.

Bootten says few whānau at the school own their own home.

Naenae Primary School principal of 29 years Murray Bootten says the school is at capacity.

But that doesn’t mean the school community has remained immune to the rising house prices: “Many of our community rentals have skyrocketed. A lot of our whānau have moved out of the area because of the rentals or landlords decided to make a profit and sell the house.”

The burgeoning roll led to an enrolment scheme, commonly known as a “zone”, being introduced for the school three years ago.

To try to curb further growth at Naenae Primary, the Ministry of Education is already reducing the size of the zone, so that next month it will cover a smaller area.

However, this will apply only to students in its six mainstream classrooms, while increasing capacity for its Māori immersion classes.

Naenae Primary’s roll has doubled in size in 10 years, leading to a zone being introduced, and now cut down.

Its three Samoan bilingual classes will also be approved as a special programme and the school has a specialist class for students with disabilities.

Tamariki who live out-of-zone will still be accepted into these classes, however, there will be a cap on these enrolments too.

Bootten says the school already has a waiting list for its special programmes for next year and inquiries from out-of-zone families wanting to join the mainstream classes.

So where will the kids who don’t get in out-of-zone go?

There are two other state primaries within walking distance of Naenae Primary: Epuni Primary and Rata Street School.

Lotus Hattersley and daughter Artie Hattersley-Ford, 9, moved to Kāpiti over Christmas where she bought a house after renting in Lyall Bay for four years where she found house prices were unaffordable.

Epuni is also at capacity. Its roll increased so dramatically (by 78%, from 89 to 158 pupils) between 2014 and 2024 that the Ministry of Education will introduce a zone next term.

Rata Street had 278 pupils in July, down 22% from 357 a decade earlier. Rata Street is unzoned, meaning it’s required to accept any enrolments.

Four primary schools have had new enrolment schemes introduced this year (Arakura School, Lakeview School, Dalefield School, Konini Primary School), while Paraparaumu Beach School alongside Naenae School have had their zones shrunk.

For parent Lotus Hattersley, housing affordability (or lack thereof) was the key factor prompting her move from Lyall Bay to Kāpiti over Christmas – meaning 9-year-old daughter Artie had to change schools.

Hattersley had always wanted to buy a home by the sea, but says the prices in the eastern suburbs were “out of my league”.

Primary and secondary school rolls have grown in Kāpiti and Paraparaumu over the last decade, including at Kenakena School in Paraparaumu Beach.

The rent on the home in Lyall Bay they’d lived in for four years had “maxed out” what they could afford.

The REINZ data showed house prices had jumped 83% in Lyall Bay School zone from $512,000 in 2014 to $935,100 a decade later.

By comparison, the median property price in Paraparaumu Beach increased by 103% in the same period, but was still lower, at $800,000.

“The value for money, moving to Kāpiti just made sense really.”

Artie had spent her first few years at Lyall Bay School, where the roll had shrunk 26% in a decade, from 438 pupils to 322.

At Kenakena School in Paraparaumu Beach, where she now attends, enrolments are up 6% (from 531 to 564). The school is unzoned.

Hattersley had noticed that larger rentals in Lyall Bay were increasingly being occupied by tertiary students rather than families.

“I think it’s really hard for families, there’s like a massive gap between wealthy older people and students,” she says.

“There were no families moving into the area, I think that’s a big part of things being difficult for the school in that way.”

Lyall Bay School declined to comment.

It is not the only school in the relatively expensive eastern suburbs that where the roll has dropped as house prices have risen.

Worser Bay School’s roll had fallen by 41% (from 195 to 115 ) between 2014 and 2024.

Joseph Coyle who is the presiding member of the board of Mākara Model School and his daughters Delphi Coyle, 10, and Stella Coyle, 7, waiting for the school bus.

At the same time, the average house inside its zone, which stretches across the eastern part of the Miramar peninsula, hit $1.3m in July, a significant increase on the $675,000 price 10 years earlier.

Worser Bay School declined to comment on the statistics.

However, John Western, who is principal at neighbouring Seatoun School, says he believes the Covid-19 pandemic had a bigger impact on roll changes in the area than house prices did.

The REINZ statistics reveal Seatoun School’s zone was the priciest in Wellington, with an average house value topping $1.6m last year.

Seatoun School had a modest 3% drop in enrolments between 2014 and 2024. But 38% of its students came from out-of-zone last year.

Mākara Model School has had the fastest growing roll in the region but Coyle says it is reflective of parents owning homes in the area who bought when it was more affordable compared to inner city suburbs and being of a similar age and having children at a similar time.

Western put this shift down to the “dramatic decline in primary school age children” in the local community over the past few years as expat families, including parents who’d come to Wellington to work in the film industry, left New Zealand during the pandemic.

Out-of-zone students have filled the gap these whānau had left, he says.

According to data from the 2023 Census, there were 132 children aged 5 to 9 living in Seatoun and 78 in Worser-Karaka Bays.

While he acknowledges houses in the area are more expensive than elsewhere, Western says there had been an uptick in houses in the zone being bought by young families in the past two years.

Seatoun School has an excellent reputation and always has a “large level of interest” from families hoping to enrol their tamariki, Western says.

Mākara Model School on the other hand, had the fastest growing roll (although it had a tiny base number), more than quadrupling from 20 students in 2014 to 85 in 2024.

Almost a third are from out-of-zone. Most out-of-zoners are from Mākara Rd in Karori and choose to go down the hill to the school, board chair Joseph Coyle says.

Coyle is also a father of two girls at the school. He says many parents are of a similar age who had children over a similar period, reflective in the school’s roll growth.

Current students are “the last echo coming through”, Coyle says.

The school was able to increase classrooms to accommodate the growth but as a relatively small school, it operates as combined years so has only four classes.

The five-year projection showed the roll being steady but “dropping a little bit”.

The suburb could benefit from more houses for new families to move in, he says.

Data on house prices in the Mākara Model School zone was unavailable because there were fewer than 15 sales in the area in the year to July 2024.

The second article in The Post’s six-part Zone Out series, looking at some of the pros, cons and pitfalls of zoning will be published on Monday.