Welcome to WCOSA

President’s Report to WCOSA AGM

Your Executive Committee has held regular meetings and email conversations during the past year.  Most have discussed immediate concerns. Following some media reports focusing on issues besetting the current school dormitories, our plans to hold an alumni dinner recognizing significant former pupils, did not eventuate.  We look forward to a time when the recognition of former pupils who have achieved at a high level in church, academic, civic, cultural and sporting endeavours impacting on Aotearoa – New Zealand, can be made and celebrated.

Your executive has followed the multi-layered Ministry of Education statements during recent months, and the governance reset made by the 2025 Conference of the Methodist Church of New Zealand – Te Haahi Weteriana o Aotearoa. As President of the Old Students’ Association I have advised the Principal, the Chair of the dissolved Trust Board, and the President of the Methodist Church of New Zealand, who now acts as the Trust Board, of our continued interest in the welfare of the current College.  The complex governance structure of the College, where there are two Boards, each with defined, yet overlapping responsibilities is not well understood, and calls for Old Student comment on, or intervention in the ‘troubles’ of the College, while well-meaning and made with the interests of the College at heart, are fraught with these been misunderstood or taken out of context.

Our Treasurer, Rod Gabb, has taken the lead to ensure that the Old Students’ Association has current registration as an Incorporated Society.  This required updating the Constitution to incorporate changes agreed at successive AGMs.  Registration under the Incorporated Societies’ Act was achieved on 26 February 2026.  On behalf of the Association, I thank Rod for this work.

The Old Students’ Association has observed the development of an outdoor arena where the former Simmonds and School Houses and their associated shelter sheds, and Denton Hall once stood.  While each of these former dormitory spaces reflected a style of accommodation that was appropriate for the time when they were build, and extensive memories of them remain in the hearts of old students it is asserted that their time had passed. This development of a very positive environment: with recreational and leisure spaces available to students can only be welcomed by the Old Students’ Association.

It should be noted plans for the Methodist Church of New Zealand to develop a ‘Wesleyan Hub’ on land owned by the Wesley College Trust Board are progressing.  This Hub is to place several Church offices and activities together on the Paerata site and will include residential space for Church activities and an auditorium for large groups to meet.  While these plans are in their formative stage, the long-term vision is noted. When founded in 1844, schooling to equip young leaders for daily life in increasingly complex world, along with a parallel theological education stream for agents of the Methodist Church were seen as complimentary. 

Once a Wesleyan always a Weslyan
Fide Litteris Labore

Ian Faulkner
President
Wesley College Old Students’ Association

23 February 2026