St Margaret’s College

St Margaret’s College in Christchurch is one of New Zealand’s leading day and boarding girls’ school with a proud history of academic, sporting and cultural excellence. An education at St Margaret’s College is holistic, embracing the spiritual and emotional wellbeing of the girls as well as their academic growth and their development in sport and the arts. St Margaret’s College is the only girls’ school in the South Island to offer the dual academic pathway of the International Baccalaureate Diploma as well as NCEA.

Throughout a girl’s time at St Margaret’s, she is seen as an individual and her learning is structured accordingly. A love of learning is instilled from a young age – throughout Junior (Years 1-6) and Middle School (Years 7-10), the girls are encouraged to discover and extend themselves, celebrate their successes, learn from their challenges and most of all, enjoy the thrill of learning. This is balanced by the extensive co-curricular programme, full of opportunity wherever a girl’s interest may lie. By the time she reaches Senior School, she is in full possession of the skills she needs to succeed in her academic pursuits. Our professional teachers, small class sizes, modern facilities and well-resourced sport and cultural programmes combined to enable young women to realise this success, whatever that might look like for them.

St Margaret’s College’s academic record in both International Baccalaureate and NCEA is consistently outstanding and while a strong academic focus will always be maintained to ensure students realise their post-school aspirations, education in this age of change is as much about character as content. To empower young women, it is important to nurture the skills and attributes that will set them up to flourish in even the most uncertain of terms. When a girl leaves St Margaret’s College, she will join over 10,000 SMC alumnae, making a positive change in business, government and the community around the world.

The boarding community is at the heart of the St Margaret’s. The three boarding houses are arranging in year groups, each tailored to the specific needs of each developmental age. They offer a warm, caring home-away-from-home atmosphere, providing the girls with the opportunity of a first-class education while building strong relationships and learning lifelong values.

For 110 years St Margaret’s College has been a family that values each girl for the gifts and talents she brings, providing a safe place for her to take on new challenges and empowering her to live and lead.