North Beach School To Mark 50th Anniversary

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31005, 10 March 1966, Page 5

North Beach School To Mark 50th Anniversary

The North New Brighton (North Beach) School has just completed its first 50 years, and official celebrations will be held during Easter, from April 9 to April 11.

Before the official celebrations, a sports day for present pupils and a teen-age dance will be held on April 7. Qn Saturday, April 9, the celebrations will start at the school, and there will be a banquet at Cowles Stadium. On Easter Sunday a church service will be held, and on Monday there will be a jubilee ball at the Winter Garden.

The school was first opened as a subsidiary of the New Brighton School in 1916, under the charge of Miss M. Peele. It then consisted of a one-roomed, unlined corrugated iron shed in the sandhills. It took pupils up to Standard 2, and on the opening day 17 pupils attended. This building was replaced by two wooden rooms. These are still part of the school.

Today the school has 17 classrooms, and 600 pupils attend.

In 1924, when the roll had reached 180 pupils, the school was established as a separate school under Mr J. Wilson The present headmaster is Mr A. M. Grigor, who succeeded Mr F. R. Price in 1963.

Success in sport was a notable feature of former pupils of the school, said a former headmaster (Mr F. R. Price). An example was Dick Motz, who as a boy in Standard 3. first won the school cricket trophy for the best all-round cricketer, a trophy which he held for four years. Other former pupils included the present New Zealand women’s open golf champion, Miss J. Butler, and Dion Murphy, first an amateur and now a professional boxer. Mr Price said that there had been a long history of surf successes among former pupils, the Dalton brothers being noteworthy examples.