Waitākere College
state secondary (year 9-15) school in Auckland, New Zealand
Waitākere College is a state coeducational secondary school located in Henderson, Auckland, New Zealand, established in 1975. A total of 1,988 students from Years 9 to 13 (ages 13 to 18) attend Waitākere College as of July 2026.
Students entering the college are allocated into one of three "Houses". The house names use Māori words: Aroha (Love), Manawanui (Perseverance), and Matauranga (Knowledge).
Waitākere College offers an extra 'Performing Arts' subject formerly run by Stephen Nightingale. Entry is based on an audition process and the course runs for years 9 and 10. It covers drama, dance, music, singing, theatre, film/television, editing, theatre lighting, make-up and costume.
Waitākere College is often used as a filming location for the New Zealand soap opera Shortland Street, as the location of Ferndale High School.
Enrolment
As of July 2026, Waitākere College has a roll of 1,988 students, of which 509 (25.6%) identify as Māori.
As of 2026, the school has an Equity Index of 480, placing it amongst schools whose students have above average socioeconomic barriers to achievement (roughly equivalent to deciles 4 and 5 under the former socio-economic decile system).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Waitākere College” is state secondary (year 9-15) school in Auckland, New Zealand. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Waitākere, College and state, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16902828. Authority coordinates are -36.867, 174.621. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1975 and 2026.
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This entry incorporates text from “Waitākere College” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.