Constructing the Community: Secondary Schools and Their Neighbourhoods in 20th Century Auckland

This paper examines the relationships between secondary schools and their local neighbourhoods in the developing urban and suburban contexts of Auckland, New Zealand, during the 20th century. It discusses the problematic and changing characteristics of school neighbourhoods, especially those relating to physical location, transport facilities, and social geography. The construction of school communities and neighbourhoods is seen as political in its character, involving clear awareness of the effects of social class and, more recently, ethnic differences upon the academic attributes and reputation of the school, even when ‘equality of opportunity’ has represented the main official ideal of schooling. Detailed examples of the patterns of secondary education are employed to help explain the ingrained assumptions of schools and local communities and to provide a historical context to major national schooling policy changes in New Zealand in the late 1980s and early 1990s.