Our UWC

Our UWC will be a two year pre-university residential programme for around 120 students each year, typically aged 17-19 years.  Its core features will include:

Student and faculty composition

• A truly international study body (typically representing up to 85 countries)
   
• Students’ selection to be based on all-round ability, including high academic performance, demonstrated leadership, and a commitment to service
   
• A certain number of places (to be determined) reserved for New Zealand students meeting the selection criteria
   
• Student participation to be scholarship funded by the student’s home UWC organisation or NZ UWC (which will include funding obtained from various philanthropic and government sources), and therefore no financial barriers to entry for applicants of any background who have outstanding potential
   
• A pre-eminent teaching faculty drawn from around the world, in residence at the college

Philosophy and programmes

• A clear and pervasive philosophy that strongly encourages excellence, innovation, diversity, and service to others
   
• An academic programme that follows the International Baccalaureate programme (first developed for and by the original UWC) – providing students with the potential to gain admission to any university in the world
   
• A ‘campus NZ’ approach, where programmes of service and extra-curricular learning connect with a diversity of New Zealand communities, other schools in the region, other places of learning (including universities, polytechnics, Crown Research Institutes, private sector businesses), and other philanthropic leadership organisations in New Zealand
   
• Programmes of personal development and environmental awareness that strongly incorporate New Zealand’s outdoor environment and the NZ Outward Bound experience
   
• Programmes that give students and faculty a rounded understanding of New Zealand – its environment, economy, government, and society as a whole
   
• Programmes that develop a rich awareness of significant challenges facing societies across the planet, and excite students to think creatively and rigorously about possible answers

Infrastructure and services

• A whole new campus – with academic and residential buildings and services – integrated in an outstanding manner with the natural surroundings
   
• Excellent teaching resources, including high performance international broadband connectivity
   
• A northern hemisphere school year, starting in September, ending early June

Funding and governance

• Firm funding to be in place (before opening) covering the school’s capital and operating costs over the medium to long term
   
• Strong and effective independent governance
   
• Student involvement in campus governance
   
• A rigorously apolitical approach to all aspects of the school’s formation, operation, policies and programmes
   
• Positive (apolitical) endorsement and (where appropriate) facilitation from the New Zealand Government

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