School Info

School Info

Our beautiful environment and superb facilities help make Otonga School a superb place to be.

Our school was named after the road that we are situated on – Otonga Road.  The name ‘Otonga’ has no actual meaning at all and is a shortening of the name of our block of land, ‘Tihiotonga’.
 
Through consultation with our kaumatua, Dr. Ken Kennedy, we have learned that this block of land intersects 4 Māori land blocks.  This is reflected in our logo of the four winds.  We have named our schoolhouses after the four winds that bring children from all over the world to this place of the tangata whenua.
 
A more accurate name for our school is ‘Te Kura o Tihiōtonga”. Tihi means the highest point of a mountain. ‘O’ means towards and ‘Tonga’ means south. Therefore Tihiōtonga means the highest peak towards the south (of Rotorua).
 
We are proud to acknowledge the people who have lived in this place before us and accept a dual name:  Otonga Road School / Te Kura o Tihiōtonga.

We have the Arts Centre (and music teacher), a newly renovated Hall,  Techie Room, a buzzing Library, brand new Admin block, and are continually upgrading our spaces to ensure indoor/outdoor flow conducive to a Learning Through Play environment. We have four playgrounds, two sandpits, an AstroTurf, an Obstacle Course, many playing fields (hockey, football/rugby), a Bike Track, a Musical, Chinese, and Bug Garden. We have covered walkways, landscaped gardens, a community garden, and shady trees to play under. Our school borders Jackson Park and Reserve and we use our environment as the third teacher. We take part in many education for sustainability initiatives.

We have a school van and we encourage teachers to get our students out and about in the community as much as possible and learn outside the classroom.

We are supported by Sport Bay of Plenty through the Healthy Active Learning (HAL) initiative to get our students physically active and foster healthy habits.

We offer numerous sporting opportunities after school and these are supported by dedicated parent volunteers.

Our Year 4 to 6 students are encouraged to purchase their own Chromebooks and our Year 1-3 students have access to our school devices. There are iPads and desktops in most classrooms.