Burnside Primary School is situated in a large park-like setting hidden behind the corner of Memorial Avenue and Ilam Road.   Our school is a “Contributing” Primary School with a roll that grows from approximately 240 to 280 pupils each year.   We enrol children from New Entrants (5 year olds) to Year 6 (11 year olds).

At Burnside Primary we believe and promote: Respect, Honesty / Integrity, Excellence / Personal Best, Responsibility / Ownership, Discipline, Sincerity.   We recognise the gifts and abilities of all pupils and provide a range on enrichment support and extension programmes to cater for individual needs.  These programmes and opportunities include:  writing enrichment, extension maths, maths problem solving, speech competitions, National Art competitions, school concerts and musical evenings, choir, Kapa Haka, chess, violin, guitar, flute, piano, woodwind groups, school camps, swimming, indoor basketball, netball, rugby, hockey, t-ball.   We provide intensive support in all aspects of English for speakers of other languages with an ESOL teacher on our staff.

Burnside Primary enhances student learning through the extensive use of Information Communication Technology (ICT).   We have recently completed a MOE contract that has involved the modernisation of our library to become a learning centre and the upgrade of the schools infrastructure to include the latest MAC and PC technologies.

Our school is proudly multi cultural and we celebrate our wide diversity of backgrounds with over 30 nationalities represented in our roll.  The school community is from a mid socio economic Decile 5 background with families engaged in a wide variety of occupations.   The Burnside area is largely residential and most of our families live within this area.

Burnside Primary is an educational base for other schools in the North West area.   The Resource Teacher of Literacy is on the staff at Burnside and serves 21 other schools.   Our Dental Clinic serves several schools and the University of Canterbury trains Reading Recovery teachers on our site.  Cobham Intermediate is situated next to our school and many of our Year 6 students who live within the Cobham zone move on to this school for Years 7 & 8.

Mr Matt Bateman
Principal.