Welcome from the Director

Kia ora! 你好! 안녕하세요! สวัสดี!Hallo! Bonjour, ¡Hola!

Welcome to the International Department of Westlake Boys High School. Our school offers an outstanding learning environment for teenage boys on Auckland’s North Shore. Providing a range of opportunities for our students, inside and outside of the classroom, we help our students discover their passion and fulfil their potential. For nearly twenty years, international students have been an important and integral part of our school as they bring with them vibrancy and global perspectives to our school. We are grateful to all our international students for making our school community much more culturally diverse and responsive.

Westlake Boys High School has high expectations of our students in everything we do. Such an approach creates a culture of achievement. As a school, we believe in:

  • Celebrating success in all forms
  • Achieving excellence in everything we do
  • Helping our students reach their personal best
  • Developing lifelong positive habits, manners and values in our students
  • Providing equality of opportunity for all of our students
  • Embracing and respecting differences

Westlake Boys High School is committed to providing an outstanding service to our international students. We offer:

  • A comprehensive orientation programme to help our new students feel a part of our community
  • Ongoing curriculum support and guidance to ensure academic success
  • After school and holiday English programmes for extra language support
  • First language support in Mandarin, Korean, Thai, Japanese, French, German, Italian and Spanish
  • Peer tutoring and buddy support from committed and caring senior students
  • Regular welfare interviews conducted by experienced staff to track and monitor student progress
  • Visa and insurance application

We thank you for your interest in our school and the staff of the International Department will be delighted to answer any questions you may have. Please feel free to contact us at [email protected]

Julia McGahan: Director of International Students

Testimonials

Adam (Xiangyu) HE

"I am very honoured to be a student at WBHS. It is a wonderful school with high achievement in both academic, music and sports. I received a friendly welcome when I first arrived at WBHS and my classmates were all eager to help me with the challenges I faced both inside school and outside. I have enjoyed participating in cultural events such as culture week as well as Chinese nights/Korean nights. Teachers in the international department and career department are always there to manage the issues I faced in my life of studying as an international student. After three years at WBHS, I have made friends from all around the world. WBHS also offers me a great experience on the stage for my interests such as hip-hop dancing and guitar to be further developed. That is why I enjoy studying at WBHS."

Testimonials from Peter (Zhan) CHEN

"When I first came to NZ, the sense of new things outweighed the panic brought by leaving my homeland and parents. Although there was a little difficulty of communicating with teachers and the pure English study, I overcame all of these with the kind help of teachers. Under their teaching, together with the hard study of myself, I improved very quickly, and soon, I was able to follow the class progress. The biggest difference between Chinese and NZ education is that you are in charge of what you learn and managing your own time; we can select the subject we love to express our talent most efficiently. Spending only six hours within the school means we have enough time to do sports or free study in our area of interest. The study in New Zealand is quite free, you can widen your eyesight, develop the hobby that you used to have no time with, and enjoy your studies abroad."