Karori Normal School

NZPlaces doesn't usually list primary schools for the reason that education in New Zealand is supposed to be the same all over.

But it's not and this place is a little bit different. Karori Normal School is one of the largest primary schools in New Zealand, usually with a roll of over 700 children. For this reason you are more likely to meet someone educated here.

"Normal", in New Zealand Primary Education is a term used to describe a school that is so average or regular that new pedagogies might be tried here for honest results. Karori fits the bill and it's proximity to the (former) Teachers Training College means lots of pilots have been carried out here.

There is nothing average about one of New Zealand's favourite literary daughters, who spent the first three years of her schooling here and later penned a short story set in the environment. Katherine Mansfield set 'The Dolls House', a discussion about class divides in New Zealand in Karori.

A token of her time here, with a strange little twist, is placed near the school's library. Mansfield died from Tuberculosis in France in 1923. Ten years later, her father, Sir Harold Beauchamp, was present for the unveiling of a birdbath with a plaque to Mansfield on it. The plaque bore her birthname (Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp) but misspelled her pen name as Katherine with an 'A". Also a little odd was the placement of the memorial between the school's two basketball courts.

In 2018, when the school upgraded their basketball facilities, the memorial was moved to the library setting, with seating for children to read. The stones were to be reused but the birdbath shape altered because 'birdbaths did not feature in Mansfield's writing.' The old plaque was replaced with a properly spelled one, and the old one kept for posterity.

A 2017 request to have Miss Mansfields remains removed from Avon, near Fontainebleau in France, disinterred and returned to New Zealand was declined by French Authorities. Other Mansfield sites in Wellington include her birthplace in Thorndon, Midland Park, The Thistle Inn, the Writers Walk, and family summer home at Day's Bay.