Gloriavale fighting move to shut school

| Greymouth Star | Arianna Stewart |

Ministry urges court to act

The Ministry of Education has made a fresh attempt to cancel Gloriavale Christian School’s registration while the Glorivale School Board says “it strongly disagrees”.

Late last year the ministry announced its intention to order the closure of the remote school of 100 students at the Lake Haupiri community at the beginning of the 2026 school year.

But its plan was foiled when the Gloriavale board of trustees in January filed for a judicial review in the High Court.

The court ordered an interim injunction against the closure plan, allowing the private school to operate as normal for the past nine months.

It also suggested individual families had the option of home schooling.

Gloriavale’s challenge over the ministry’s December action is set to be heard in the High Court next month. The ministry did not previously oppose the challenge and so the judicial review is still expected to go ahead.

But yesterday it applied to the court to set aside its original decision of December. In light of an Education Review Office report dated July, it said it will issue a new directive to cancel the registration and formally close the school.

Education Services deputy secretary Geoff Short said yesterday the ministry has decided to order a new cancellation after considering fresh findings from ERO, released in July.

“The ministry has applied to the court to lift interim orders relating to the Secretary for Education’s December 2025 decision to cancel the school’s registration as a private school to enable this latest decision to be implemented,” Mr Short said.

The school currently has about 80 enrolled students.

In a statement, Gloriavale School told the Greymouth Star it will continue to fight. “The school strongly disagrees with the ministry’s decision and is currently considering its options to challenge it.

“Given that the matter is ongoing,we will not be making any further comment at this time,” a board spokesman said. Mr Short said the ministry will work with the school community to determine the most practical timing for closure, “with students’ best interests guiding those discussions”.

Further information on that was being provided directly to affected families.

The ERO ‘special review’ released in July suggested improvements at the school were “evident in some aspects” but said significant concerns remained.

“ERO is not assured that safeguarding systems are sufficiently aligned, transparent and robust in practice. Across several areas, improvements are partial and not yet sufficiently embedded or sustained.”

ERO also described “a high reliance” on external consultants to support the school.

“ERO did not see sufficient evidence that it is resulting in internal capability building for self-sustaining improvement,” the office said.

The Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand is currently investigating two allegations of staff misconduct. The school has already provided ERO with a letter of suspension for one staff member.

Children’s Commissioner Jane Searle weighed in this morning, saying the wellbeing, safety and rights of children must be the priority. She had been briefed by the ministry and said attention must now turn to supporting children and families through what could be a challenging period of change.

Nine months on from its first announcement, the ministry did not say what alternatives it now plans for affected Gloriavale children if it succeeds in cancelling the registration.

In reply to questions from the Greymouth Star, the ministry could not say and did not confirm if it was still considering a correspondence school hub at Gloriavale, or busing children to a local school.

In June, it shifted a twoclassroom block to Awahono School at Ahaura, which it said at the time “may cater to” Gloriavale students in the future.

Awahono School is about 48km from Gloriavale.

The High Court interim decision for Gloriavale School in January said the ministry did not have any supervision lined up for Gloriavale children who would be undertaking correspondence school at its proposed Te Kura Hub at Lake Haupiri.

Justice Jason McHerron, summing up in January, said cancellation of the school’s registration “might be acceptable” if a clear plan was in place for ongoing education at Gloriavale.

Justice McHerron said further material would need to be provided about the potential emotional and physical safety of the students to weigh against the interim order, stopping the ministry’s application.