Onslow College is a decile 10 co-educational state secondary school located in Johnsonville, a suburb of Wellington, New Zealand. It serves students in years 9 to 13, or forms three through seven.

This school covers a large geographical zone, with students travelling from as far away as Karori in the east of the city. The school has about 1100 students, making it one of the largest in the Wellington area.

Culture

Onslow differentiates itself from other Wellington schools largely through its cultural aspects. It has a reputation for having a very liberal and relaxed attitude, known as "The Onslow Way", and is one of only two secondary schools in Wellington not to have a uniform (the other being the central-city Wellington High School, to which it is often compared, and the origin of its current principal Dr. Stuart Martin). The school describes itself as "a learning environment that encourages independence, self-discipline, and social responsibility with a student-centred philosophy" and attempts to include this philosophy in all aspects of the school.

Onslow is host to a School's Out group for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students, as well as a variety of other student groups including Amnesty International, "Jellyfish" Christian group, and many sporting teams.

Academic Performance

Although often criticised for its perceivedly lax attitudes, students at the school achieve results in line with the mean for schools in similar socio-economic situations. However, this has not always been the case and results in earlier years were sometimes significantly below the relevant means as Onslow often lost more capable students to the more prestigious Wellington College and Wellington Girls' College before changes to the school zoning laws came into effect.

Strengths and Achievements

Onslow's faculty is very strong in arts instruction, and over the years has turned out some of the top creative minds in the country. In particular, drama has been a very significant strength of the school, as shown by achievements in competitions such as the Stage Challenge. This success has been fostered by the likes of Bernard Beckett , a highly-regarded drama teacher who has also produced out some world-class plays and films.

Onslow is regarded as especially strong in the languages field, providing instruction in a variety of them to a high standard and regularly producing winners of regional contests at all levels (such as the annual Japanese Language Role-Play Competition organised by the Japanese Language Coordinator and German speech competition). Every year there is a student exchange trip with the students from Yamamura Girls' High School in Japan, known as the "On-Yam" Exchange, as well as a number of other curricular trips and exchanges, for example to Germany, Mexico, Greece and Italy, and New Caledonia.

External links

The official Onslow College website