House Competition

House Structure and Competition

New Plymouth Boys’ High School has a vertical house structure based around four well-known Old Boys. Each student in the school is allocated a House when they begin their education at the school. Where there are brothers they are all placed in the same house. Day students are distributed alphabetically, based on their surname, into three Houses, Donnelly, Barak and Syme (A – H: Donnelly / I – P: Barak / Q – Z: Syme). Students who reside in the hostel are allocated, irrespective of their surname, to Hatherly House.

The House structure is based on vertical grouping with the 3 day-houses having 15 groups and the hostel house (Hatherly) having 8 groups. Each group has students from Year 9 through to Year 13 in it with a teacher in charge of each group. Each house has a teacher as Senior Housemaster and a Year 13 student as Head of House. Depending on where in the alphabet the student’s surname is depends on which house they are placed in. For example a student whose surname begins with M would be in Barak house. Each group has the first letter of their house (B, D or S) and a number eg. Barak 13 is called B13.

The Houses

Donnelly (House-colour, Blue)

This House was named after Martin Donnelly (1917 – 1999) who was at school from 1930 – 1936. Martin Donnelly was a New Zealand test cricketer as well as an English rugby union player. He was selected for the NZ tour of England in 1937 at the age of 19 and was the first New Zealander to make a double-century at Lords.

Syme (House-colour, Yellow)

Sir Ronald Syme, (1903 – 1989) was associated with Oxford University where he is widely regarded as the 20th century’s greatest historian on ancient Rome. Sir Ronald was at school from 1918 – 1920.

Barak (House-colour, Green)

Dr Monty Barak attended school from 1916 – 1920 and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship in 1926 to study at Oxford University. His specialist field was in electrochemistry.

Hatherly (House-colour, Red)

John Hatherly was at New Plymouth Boys’ High School from 1928 – 1933. He returned to school as a teaching master from 1940 – 1978. During that time he was a boarding master for all but two years from 1940 – 1976.

Students are able to buy their respective house singlets from the Uniform Shop.