About 230 people attended a meeting to discuss possible future options for education in Hawera.

A super-school teaching children from pre-school to tertiary is one of five possibilities being mooted for education in South Taranaki.

The community is being asked if it wants to investigate different options for its schools.

Five models were presented by a facilitation group formed by the three principals and their boards of trustees chairmen, at a community meeting attended by about 230 people in Hawera on Tuesday. All but one could see the end of the town's intermediate school as its own entity.

The idea came about after conversations between the principals of Hawera Intermediate School, Hawera High School and Hawera Primary School, meeting chairman Phil Nixon said.

With both the high school and primary school already having major building projects to address issues with weather-tightness and earthquake strengthening, and the necessity to rebuild the intermediate after October's fire, it was a good chance to ask the community how they wanted their children educated in the future, he said.

"We don't have to change anything but we need to consider if we can improve outcomes for our students by doing something different," said Hawera High School principal Hans Konlechner.

"We did become quite excited about some of the possibilities of modern classrooms and curriculum collaboration."

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One of the possible models was to keep the status quo, carry out building work on the other schools and rebuild the intermediate school in a contemporary, modern style.

A second option sees Hawera Primary School taking students through from year one to eight, then children going directly to high school. This would mean one less transition to another school for these students, but raised questions of whether other primary schools in the district also went to year eight, or if their students transferred to another school for the intermediate years.

Option three, sending children to an enlarged high school from years seven to 13, offered advantages of pooled resources economies of scale and reduced transitions.

Model four was for a super-school which could be on one site or several and would take children in one institution from early childhood education to tertiary training.

A fifth option was for primary from years 1-6, a middle school for children from years 7-10, and senior school for students from 11-13.

This model worked well for students when there was a roll of 2000 or more which enabled a large range of options to be taught, but would not work in a smaller community, said Konlechner.

Turuturu principal Richard Bradley said prior to the fire there was no mood for change.

"It [the present system] wasn't broke at the time and the contributing schools are well thought of by their commentates. I believe the final decision will be made a long way from Hawera and a long way from the people gathered here," he said to a round of applause.

Former intermediate school teacher and group member Gerard Langford said he had joined the group to support the others, who were volunteers "just wanting to do the best thing for the community."

"It's a conversation asking 'do you want to have a conversation about this." Do you want us to explore the possible options. If the consensus is yes, then we will start that process."

Mayor Ross Dunlop he fully supported the idea of looking into the issue.

"The school fire and the other schools looking at some major building projects in the next year or so is a wonderful opportunity to look at how education will look in this town for the next few years."

Ministry of Education representatives were at the meeting to answer questions but would wait to see what the community wanted, before reporting to the Minister of Education.

Community feedback is being sought through more meetings and a website, www.educationhawera.nz , until April 15. A decision whether to investigate other alternatives would be made by June.

The website has been corrected from earlier.