Ohoka: A school with history

As written for the community newsletter by Sue Allison

The children of the early colonial settlers in Ohoka were educated in a house in Bradley’s Road (then Smith’s Road). This aptly named  “Temporary School”, set up in a two-storey brick building owned by the Bradley family, was established in 1862 and was school to just a handful of children.  

On 30 June 1868, a proper school was officially opened on a site in Flaxton with a roll of 22 children. It was named the Flaxton Side School and stood on about an acre of land near the junction of Main Drain Road, Flaxton Road and Threlkelds Road. (The original concrete trough can still be seen today.) The wood and iron building had room for 40 pupils in a single classroom with a porch. A four-room house was built nearby for the caretaker.  

 Around 1873, with the district flourishing and Ohoka the home of a flax mill, wool wash and thriving village, a building on the present Jackson’s Road school site was used to teach senior pupils from the Side School. This was known as Flaxton School.  

In 1877, the Flaxton Side School was closed and a school built on the Jackson’s Road site in Ohoka (then Wetheral). The school was known as the Flaxton Main School. It started with a roll of 94. The principal was Mr Goodeve, with his wife and a pupil teacher, Miss Eliza Sealy, his assistants.   

Records show that the name Ohoka School was officially adopted in 1909, with Mr George Gilling as principal.  

A report dated 1923 stated that the workload of the two teachers employed at that time was too arduous, there being 78 pupils at the school, but that would ease when the roll grew to 81 at which time a third teacher would be employed.  

In 1926, the school was burnt down in a dramatic overnight fire. Most records of the Flaxton and Ohoka Schools were destroyed. All that was left of the school was the bell, which we still use. After the fire, a new two-room school was built and these classrooms still stand.