Board members Sam Crookes, Lara Collier, Tristan O’Hanlon, Ben Himme, Ella Philp and Jonathan Rogers at the school building site. Photo / Supplied
The school already has 87 families expressing interest, before enrolments have opened, most of them local to Titirangi and the surrounding West Auckland suburbs.
The school is partially bankrolled by game developer Jonathan Rogers, who is behind West Auckland company Grinding Gear Games, which was sold for more than $100 million to a Chinese firm in 2018.
“After my son was born, I started to become a lot more concerned about the fact that there wasn’t a school in West Auckland for the type of kid that I was growing up.”
He said he’d been friends with Academy director and principal Tristan O’Hanlon since high school.
“His family comes over every weekend for a barbecue, so we were often talking about what an ideal school for kids interested in science and tech would look like, and at some point we realised that we should be the ones to do it.”
Rogers said the concept for the school has been years in the making. In 2020, they began keeping an eye out for potential sites and in 2022, they began to assemble a curriculum.
A still from the popular Grinding Gears game Path of Exile 2.
“The Academy is different from other schools in that we have a focused curriculum designed exactly for the type of kid who loves science and technology.”
Rogers is on the board of directors of the school, with his passion for programming reflected in the curriculum. Students will study programming languages such as C++, Python and JavaScript.
“We also have the ability to weave in programming throughout the entire school, which we believe is a really key skill. Like learning how to read and write, learning how to code is something that can improve your ability to learn and work in almost any other field.”
Fridays at the school will be reserved for sustained, hands-on projects such as robotics challenges, long-term science investigations, coding applications, debate preparation and field trips.
Renderings of The Academy’s campus at 70-74 Hilling St, Titirangi. Photo / Supplied
Above everything, Rogers said he thinks the key difference will be the teachers.
“Our teachers go above and beyond. They instil a culture of excellence. And what that means is having higher expectations of kids.
“We want every kid to have the experience of trying something that they didn’t think they could do, and then succeeding at it.”
As a game developer, Rogers said it’s rare to find New Zealanders who have the skills he needs, so he has to hire from overseas “frequently”.
“There is clearly a problem that needs addressing, but at the same time, we are only one school, and a small one.
“Our goal isn’t to fix the New Zealand education system, it’s to make sure that if you are the type of kid who is interested in science and tech, that there is a place where you can excel.”
Principal O’Hanlon was previously a physics teacher and currently works at the University of Auckland in the Department of Physics and the School of Curriculum and Pedagogy.
The Academy director and principal Tristan O’Hanlon was previously a physics teacher.
“We’ll be a small school, especially when we first open, but those kids who are lucky enough to enrol in the first few years will get a lot more attention from our staff, who will have a fraction of the number of students a normal teacher has each year,” he said.
Enrolments won’t formally open until they have certainty in the construction timeframe, but the roll will be capped at 140, O’Hanlon said.
“The curriculum is complete and policy work is ongoing with our academic board, all we are really awaiting now is the building to be completed.
“While we wait, we are offering part of our junior technology programme to local primary and intermediate schools through after-school and holiday programmes.”
Construction on the school at 70 Hilling St began in August, after Auckland Council granted resource consent in June. O’Hanlon said the foundations are nearing completion, and they are now awaiting the framing.
“The main building is due to be wrapped early next year, which should speed up this phase of construction.”
The main building will feature two science labs and two classrooms. Three additional classrooms on the west end of the site will be built in the final phase of construction.
Renderings of The Academy’s campus at 70-74 Hilling St, Titirangi. Photo / Supplied
The rear building will house a student common room, an outdoor area and more staff facilities.
O’Hanlon said they had conversations with the charter school agency but ultimately opted to go private.
“Charter schools have some flexibility, but if the political winds change, we could lose some of our ability to carry out our model of excellent education. The risk to us is future interference.
“We are committed to being a small school with small class sizes so that we can provide individual learning programmes and projects. Charter school funding is simply not enough to do this.”
Jaime Lyth is a multimedia journalist for the New Zealand Herald, focusing on crime and breaking news. Lyth began working under the NZ Herald masthead in 2021 as a reporter for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei.