Part 3: Gloriavale School – Built to Fail?

Opinion piece: Liz Gregory.

(Thoughts, opinions and views expressed here belong to Liz Gregory and may or may not represent the views of the Gloriavale Leavers’ Support Trust, former or current members of Gloriavale.).

Part Three – Why is the School Closing?

It’s a decades long tale but to set the scene, the group started a school on the Spingbank site around 1971. This school did have some people involved who had trained as teachers and had passion for education. They needed a minimum number to get the school going and they were short by a few children. (Interesting side story, but a leaver wanted me to note here that Hopeful Christian finally managed to get the numbers to start the school by using deceit and manipulation to bring a grieving widow and her seven children down from the North Island and then keep them there after an unfortunate incident involving a car. He convinced them to add their children’s names to the school roll so the school began… The family want people to know this part of the story which has been long forgotten).

The community relocated to Gloriavale on the West Coast during the early 1990’s. They had just been raided by the Police and their leader Hopeful Christian arrested and subsequently jailed for sexual offending. Just one read of the court report and it’s clear the probation officer held grave concerns for the community if he were to return, writing, “but I can not help but wonder the future of the children in particular should he return to live there in the future.”

But return he did… to take charge of the whole community including the school for the decades to come. It was a recipe for disaster. From one generation to the next and the next and the next. It has been devastating for those who have left and those who are still inside Gloriavale. Leavers and current members are quite right to be upset that they felt failed by the system and also by those who knew and who didn’t act.

As far as the Education Department officials were concerned, there was a flurry of activity in the earlier days with some concerns about the school – particularly that the school at the new Haupiri site was not registered. News articles recently unearthed have shed light on the concerns of education officials. For reasons unknown they were eventually given special dispensation to keep the school running after ERO did a review. They were typically reviewed every three years by ERO (Education Review Office). During this time they passed them with only the odd comment here and there of concern around the sexist curriculum. These appear to have never been followed up and were ignored by successive Governments and civil servants. Basically, a lot of people cumulatively failed to do their jobs.

Why? Who would know. I guess we will find that out in court in upcoming years. The Ministry of Education, ERO and the Teaching Council have been named as parties in court proceedings, instigated by leavers who want to know who was responsible for leaving them to suffer at the hands of abusers and predators for decades.

There were very few advocates speaking up back then. One MP, Catherine Delahunty, tried to bring the issue to the attention of the Govt and she went to the media in 2015 stating she was concerned the girls at Gloriavale weren’t getting an adequate education. She was ignored. Dr Liz Gordan has been the only other outspoken critic of the school. Read about her concerns here. I know there are leavers who would like to thank both of those ladies for speaking out over the years and for recognising the issues.

Finally ERO reviews the school with their eyes wide open

During the 2022/2023 Employment Court trials (leavers vs Gloriavale and the Government) a lot of information came out about the school that was troubling. Add that to the information that was already widely publicly available from media reports and the dozens of leavers who have spoken up over the years. But it must have been a little embarrassing for ERO and the MOE to be named by the Judge as failing to execute their duties appropriately. Gloriavale then failed their 2023 review, and then another review in 2025. It appeared the officials were starting to understand what they were looking at. You can read the 2025 Special Review here to get a sense for how the school was not meeting expected standards.

A Microscopic Examination

For a more detailed look at how it all unfolded read these three blog posts:

Spotlight on Education (18 July 2023)

ERO didn’t make an error this time (31 October 2023)

It’s our fault Gloriavale failed their ERO Review? (I Nov 2023)

So what led to the final failure of the school?

In short, it’s been SIX years since leavers urged me to help them answer the question, “Why doesn’t anyone do something about the Gloriavale School?”

By Gloriavale’s own admission, the school has been heading towards a catastrophic (my words) staffing shortage for a decade.

I suggest there has been a long-term failure to plan. Failure to educate. Failure to care.

Staffing Shortages

Gloriavale knew about their upcoming staffing shortages many, many years ago and they made some attempts to head these off by allowing many teachers to apply for LATS’s (Limited Authority to Teach). In more recent years they were shoulder tapping people with very short notice (whether they were willing or unwilling, suitable or unsuitable) to start their teacher training, in the hopes that the Ministry of Education would tarry with them long enough and they could pull themselves out of the hole. But it was too late.

By 2021 many males were under investigation (more than 30) for inappropriate sexual or physical offending. Some females had extremely large families and required health support during and after pregnancies. Other mums were already homeschooling since the high school failed back in 2022. Others had jobs in the community that couldn’t be abandoned. Additionally over 250 -300 people had left the community since 2013 reducing the pool of suitable candidates. Their internal recruitment plan was ultimately always going to fail.

But they found a solution to keep the school open for a little longer. Over time the community had invested in training up many, many females to become Early Childhood teachers (this was a booming business with four pre-schools and a HEAP of Government money flowing into this cash-positive business.) But when the school failed they were left with no option but to transfer these ladies into the school to prop it up, leaving only one pre-school operating.

Principal Failures

They also went through three Principals in a short amount of time due to leavers’ complaints, which showed successive principals had signed off teachers who they knew to be either sexual offenders, had employed people who a history of physical violence, or who were wholly unsuitable for the job. Some teachers and the Principal went through the Teaching Council investigation process. We are still unsure how more of them were not put through this process. The most recent Principal is an early childhood trained midwife, with no previous experience or exposure to running a school. It must have been a very stressful past year or two for her. But as a loyal member of the community, and for someone who loves children, I imagine she has worked hard to fix what needed fixing.

Sexual offenders and multiple failures…

Another factor in the failure of the school was the knowledge that sexual offending had occurred, and had not been dealt with. Just last week a leaver delivered me to sticker booklets that was used when she was at school. She explained that when they learnt a memory verse, they would be given a sticker by the teacher and the “treat” of getting to sit on his lap … I’ll say no more. That man is currently in prison having pled guilty to sexual offending of more than 20 little girls over decades…

Physical discipline (corporal punishment) was outlawed in NZ state schools in 1987 and private schools in 1990. All leavers will attest that Gloriavale continued with this for another 25 years or more…

Let’s add poor educational provision and opportunities into the mix. Many, including teachers who have since left, documented poor teaching practices. Little understanding of childhood development. School controlled by the leadership instead of an independent board, and the list goes on and on.

This is not to say there aren’t some very intelligent and capable people in Gloriavale. There are many. This simply acknowledges that through no fault of their own, members were not provided the freedom to enjoy the range of opportunities that registered schools in NZ provide. Leavers regularly state that education was not valued, and in some cases those who did show an aptitude for academic study were criticised. Practical contribution to the community was the main way to gain favour.

Whistle Blowers

When former teachers Hopeful and Victory Disciple left in 2021, it only added to the already developing serious crisis in the school. Not only had Gloriavale lost a couple who had a lot of desire and energy to make the school a safer place, and also increase achievement, they also had lost people with intimate knowledge of the school’s deficits. And they were willing to blow the whistle – for love of the children that remained.

They and other leavers say the problem all boils down to community doctrines and beliefs that devalue the individual and emphasise the group and the need for loyalty. A lot gets sacrificed on the altar of loyalty inside groups like this.

Education was only valuable if it added to the skill set that the community needed. It comes down to the fact that inside culty groups your value is set by those in charge.

That’s why wholly inappropriate people were put into the school, and the educational provision was poor. Many leavers don’t even blame those teachers, as they are aware that they didn’t necessarily get a choice to teach there.

But hasn’t Gloriavale School improved?

Yes it has. Credit where credit is due. The Ministry of Education likely didn’t have a solution for a failing private school and finally after realising we weren’t going to stop sharing leavers concerns with them, they set about to throw resources at this private school to help improve it.

(Just a note that any hopes of a Commissioner taking over the school were quickly squashed when the MOE confirmed they did not have jurisdiction to do this in a private school. For private schools there are only two options available – Meet the standards, or be deregistered. There is no middle ground available).

Gloriavale brought on advisors, set up a school board sometime in 2021, and scrambled to deal with a long list of complaints from leavers. They catastrophically failed to adequately deal with these complaints. I am not aware of anyone who submitted a complaint receiving an email from the School or the Teaching Council to let them know how the issues were resolved…

Gloriavale also tried to recruit outside teachers, and have had success with one lady moving to the community to live in the hostels to generously assist them in the past two years. (Leavers have mixed feelings around sincere people who step into their world and try to assist. Many thinks it just delays the process, and they maintain that even being in close proximity, you still miss the undercurrent of the strength of the indoctrination that exists. Leavers say they were experts at putting on a mask inside Gloriavale and they would ensure outsiders were won over to their way of life and good intentions.)

Gloriavale also tried and failed to recruit a principal.

They did put plans in place to meet the Ministry’s standards, improving from failing 6/8 standards in October 2023 to 3/8 in July 2025.

But, it’s off the basis of this last report, and a less than suitable plan provided by Gloriavale, with generous extensions always granted when requested, that the Gloriavale School closure was finally announced.

Gloriavale are understandably upset. They have invested a lot of time and energy into keeping the school afloat and improving educational provision. To them this feels unjust (their words).

But the MOE have decided they don’t believe Gloriavale is capable of getting across the threshold of providing a safe physical and emotional environment. We concur – but I’m not sure if it’s for the same reasons.

For leavers the repetitive theme that they have been trying to get across is that the lack of safety is linked to the fact this school is still a school set in a cult environment. The same community members who are signed up to the cult’s ideology, are the exact same people teaching in the school. The school has been a foundation of the community from the day it opened. It allowed the isolation of young people to occur, it allowed a harmful indoctrination programme to exist. It allowed its beliefs and practices to be perpetrated down for generations. There is no quick fix.

But from next year on, for SIX hours a day the children will get a reprieve from this.

Summary

At the end of the day, if you owned a school and it ended up repetitively failing to meet expectations, and you made improvements, you WOULD think the change was monumentally substantial and incredible. And you would rightly feel aggrieved that you have still failed to meet the standard. (As does Gloriavale.) But it’s likely the problem is not with the standard. It’s with their system. There are external standards and expectations they needed to meet. The Gloriavale School have failed to do so – even with support. There is finally a growing recognition that they will unlikely to ever be able to do so. And so the Secretary of Education has done what many people expected should have been done a long time ago, she has announced the closure of this private school in order to provide the children with better and safer educational provision.

This is the first time a private school in NZ has ever been closed by the Ministry of Education.

Moral of the Story

If you are convinced of wrong-doing and a failure of an organisation to meet standards, (especially where they involve child safety) don’t idly sit by. Our country relies on people acting in defence of those who are unable to improve their own circumstances. Think, act and don’t give up.

Read Part Four of this blog series to find out about the reaction to the school’s closure from leavers, people in Gloriavale and the public.