About Our School

Kia ora,

Tapawera Area School is a school that serves our local and wider community for students aged 5 to 19 years old. We have wonderful facilities which have been modernised recently and have some more major updates planned for 2026 and 2027. These facilities allow our students from an early age to experience and take part in specialist subject areas and facilities for earlier than they would at a ‘normal’ primary school.

We are close enough to Nelson to allow our senior students easy access to NMIT and Whenua Iti Trades Academies in years 11-13 for a huge range of high quality tertiary formatted courses.

We have Tapawera Kindergarten on our site allowing for amazing links pre and post starting our kura and playcentre is less than 100 meters away as well.

We currently have 5 school bus runs to service our wider community, free of charge to our families. Small class sizes, high quality subject specialist qualified teachers and a very strong learning support facility only adds to the value of our school.

We strive to succeed in giving multiple opportunities to all our students, some of which they would not get in larger urban schools. We pride ourselves on knowing every student's strengths and weaknesses and getting the best possible outcomes for them. We are large enough to provide for excellence and small enough to support all of our students and community needs. I look forward to meeting with you at any point and welcome questions or visits to our kura.

Andy Ashworth
Principal
“Providing Excellence, Opportunity and Equity for all”