Week 2, Term 3

Celebrating 130 Years of Rangi Ruru Girls’ School

Today we marked the founding of Rangi Ruru. Rangi Ruru is the oldest independent girls’ school in Christchurch, and it owes its foundation to the hard work of a remarkable family and group of women. The Gibson sisters devoted their lives to the education of the young women in their care. They supported one another and set a model for sisterhood that continues to this day.

The school began in 1889 when Helen Gibson took over the running of the previously named Hessle School, they were living in Arawa House on Papanui Road, where Selwyn House is today, and it opened with 18 pupils. It wasn’t long before it outgrew the site and so the Gibson family bought land on the south-east corner of Webb St and Papanui Road. There they built a large house with two school rooms and bedrooms for boarders. While the house was being built Paora Taki of Rapaki, who had known Captain Gibson, gifted the house the name Rangi-Ruru or “Wide Sky Shelter” and in 1983 the school became officially known as Rangi-Ruru.

By 1923 the school had outgrown Webb St and in consultation with their brothers, Frederick and Thomas, Helen Gibson and her sisters made the bold decision to purchase Te Koraha for £9000. The move would allow them to take up to 40 boarders and at the start of 1924 there were 216 girls on the roll. They had to move the classrooms from Webb Street and the stables were converted to classrooms. Some of our old girls still talk about their time in the stables.

There was a strong sense of the school as a family then as it is today and many pupils were the daughters of Old Girls, a tradition that continues today with some of our current students as third generation descendants. Helen Gibson in her prize-giving speech to parents in 1933 after being Principal for 45 years summarised her aim for Rangi Ruru:

“to build up character – to hand back to you, girls who will prove strong in body, pure in mind, and cultured in intellect” – Helen Gibson Prizegiving Speech 1933

130 years later the School continues to be among the leading Girls’ School in New Zealand placed in the top 3% Academically and with outstanding results in sport, music and the arts, a school that was built on a strong foundation with Christian values. I think that the Gibson Sisters would be proud of the legacy that they have left and that continues to this day.

“Whaia to te Rangi”

Seek the Heavenly Things