Roncalli College is a

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

secondary school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., b ...

Timaru Timaru (; ) is a port city in the southern Canterbury Region of New Zealand, located southwest of Christchurch and about northeast of Dunedin on the eastern Pacific Ocean, Pacific coast of the South Island. The Timaru urban area is home to peo ...

, New Zealand. It was named after

Pope John XXIII Pope John XXIII (born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli; 25 November 18813 June 1963) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 28 October 1958 until his death on 3 June 1963. He is the most recent pope to take ...

, whose birth name was Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli. A co-educational school with about 500 students from Year 9 to Year 13, it stands on Craigie Avenue, next to the Sacred Heart Basilica. It is set on of land, with 13 free-standing buildings. It practices NCEA examinations for its senior students. In 2005, 87.7% of Roncalli students achieved NCEA Level 1, 70.3% achieved Level 2, 71.2% achieved Level 3, and 66.7% achieved university entrance. Sports played include netball, rugby,

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appro ...

, rowing, mountain biking, badminton, volleyball, soccer, tennis, cricket, and hockey. Cultural activities include occasional hakas and church services. The school has a large foreign student population, coming from Europe, South America, Asia, and the Pacific Islands. Roncalli College was awarded the 2006 ''Education Outdoors New Zealand (EONZ) Program Award'' by EONZ for its years 10, 12, and 13 outdoor education programs.

History

Roncalli College was created by merging St. Patrick's High School and Mercy College in 1981. Roncalli is now on the site, and most of the buildings are remnants from the days of the single-sex schools. St. Patrick's was the local high school for Catholic boys, run by the Marist order, and Mercy College was the local Catholic school for girls, run by the Mercy sisters, from their convent, which was situated on what is now the rugby field, also known as the Thunder Dome. The schools were separated by the "Iron Curtain" or "Brown Curtain", a corrugated iron fence that ran the length of the boundary between the two schools, which kept the boys and girls separated. The penalties for being on the wrong side of the fence were rather severe; any boy caught on the wrong side of the fence without a valid reason was invariably caned. In the last days of St. Pats and Mercy, the pupils from St. Pats were instructed by the rector to tear down the fence as a prelude to amalgamation. The event was photographed and featured in the ''

Timaru Herald ''The Timaru Herald'' is a daily provincial newspaper serving the Timaru, South Canterbury and North Otago districts of New Zealand. The current audited daily circulation is about 14,500 copies, with a readership of about 31,000 people. The pa ...

'' newspaper. In October 2007, Roncalli College celebrated its 25th Jubilee.

Enrolment

As of , the school has a roll of students, of which (%) identify as Māori. As of , the school has an

Equity Index In finance, a stock index, or stock market index, is an index that measures the performance of a stock market, or of a subset of a stock market. It helps investors compare current stock price levels with past prices to calculate market perform ...

of , placing it amongst schools whose students have socioeconomic barriers to achievement (roughly equivalent to deciles 5 and 6 under the former

socio-economic decile In the education in New Zealand, New Zealand education system, decile was a key measure of socioeconomic status used to target funding and support schools. In academic contexts the full term "socioeconomic decile" or "socioeconomic decile band" wa ...

system).

Notable alumni

* Bronson Beri – basketball player * Gareth Dawson – basketball player * Deborah Geels – diplomat

Notes

External links

Roncalli College Website
{{Schools in Canterbury Educational institutions established in 1982 Timaru Secondary schools in the Canterbury Region Catholic secondary schools in New Zealand 1982 establishments in New Zealand