By Rhonda Bartle

NPBHS Boarding Facility in 1924: Once one of the biggest boarding facilities in the country. Alaric Wilson, who began his education at NPBHS, later returned as housemaster and tutor. Image Puke Ariki Pictorial Collection, A.3.94, LN1597.

A stone's throw from Bell St

Alaric Wilson was born in New Plymouth and has lived in three different houses on Frank Wilson Terrace, which was named after his father when family land was subdivided.

His current house is just eight years old, with a wide wooden deck built out into lush mature bush. It's hard to imagine he lives in the city, with rimu and pūriri trees growing so close to the balustrades.

Yet, interestingly, he's just a stone's throw from Bell St, the site of the old Taranaki Polytechnic, now the Western Institute of Technology in Taranaki (WITT). Alaric spent nearly two decades as founding principal.
 
"Dad was mayor of New Plymouth from 1920 till 1927. He became mayor when the previous mayor was killed in a plane crash at the end of Bell St. My brother said he and dad walked up from Hobson St where they lived to see the crash."

Sadly, Frank Wilson died suddenly in 1927, when Alaric was just four months old. "He was only ill for a day. I never knew him."

Alaric attended New Plymouth Boys' High School and might have followed his father into law, but with four solicitors already in the Wilson family, his mother convinced him to try something different. Instead, he went into chemistry, left New Plymouth in 1946 and returned in 1952 to take up a post at his old school as housemaster and teacher.

The plane crash at Bell St that Alaric's father and brother walked up to see: Image Puke Ariki Pictorial Collection.

Founding principal

In 1927,  the New Plymouth Technical School had ceased to exist when it merged with NPBHS. In 1972, Alaric Wilson took the helm of the technical division of NPBHS when it became the Taranaki Polytechnic, a time he describes as 'exhilarating.'

"I was involved from about 1970 onwards. In 1971, they approved the Technical School to become a polytechnic and it started in 1972. 

I was appointed in 1971 and we went down to the building on Liardet St. I was founding principal and stayed till the end of 1988."

Alaric says it was a wonderful job, with growth all the time. "We had no buildings. We started off with a staff of about a dozen and when I left, there were over 300 counting the part-time staff. We had a very supportive council. Though it wasn't hard, we worked very hard."

With a philosophy that the Polytechnic was there to service the needs of Taranaki, Alaric watched as the institution went from strength to strength. "That was our mandate, so we tried to meet the needs of the province for post-secondary education. We were the only tertiary institute; there were no private providers at all at that time."

In those earliest days at Liardet St, despite the size of the rooms determining the size of the classes, the Polytechnic offered secretarial, electrical, carpentry, joinery, automotive classes, along with a large number of community courses.

The Taranaki Education Workshops, opened in 1923, were the forerunner

 of the New Plymouth Technical School. Image Puke Ariki Pictorial Collection, A.26.102 LN2650.

A Move to Bell St

He says the biggest challenge was the major building programme following the proposed move to Bell St. Government approval to run courses had to be sought, which meant much time spent travelling to Wellington to confront the appropriate authorities. "They were open, but it was very much a controlled situation," Alaric says. "They were determined to make the classes viable. It was very much a matter of viable numbers. We had to prove we had enough numbers."

Staff also fought long and hard to get Māori training. "They wouldn't allow that until we had a hostel and it took three or four years to secure Rangiatea hostel."

But the Taranaki Polytechnic grew steadily and well. By 1974, Fitting and Turning and full-time technician certificate courses were introduced and a rage of others followed.  The 1980s Think Big Projects, which resulted in energy projects being built at Waitara Valley and Motunui impacted greatly, with the polytechnic team trying hard to meet the requirements for training workers in the gas-to-gasoline industry.

 "The people doing the pipeline taught their welders themselves, often on the pipeline in farm sheds. Their failure rate was around 90%. And so there was a move from Wellington – and we pushed for it too - to set up a major welding school here. We got approval eventually, but it wasn't easy. And then we had to overcome some resistance from industry."

Eventually, a deal was struck with Bechtel, the firm involved, with men trained at the Polytechnic with the company supplying equipment and consumables – a New Zealand first.

A new nursing degree

The next major step was the implementation of a nursing course. When the philosophy of nursing changed to training people to keep people well, rather than simply treating them when they became ill, the move was made to take nurses away from hospital training and put them into a polytechnic where they could be given wider skills.

"Of course, there was huge resistance," Alaric says. "But eventually, they changed over, and New Plymouth was geographically suited and we got a nursing course. Suddenly, Taranaki Polytechnic could offer the three-year comprehensive nursing course, which later became a degree course, which in turn meant graduates and a break away from the original mandate to leave those to the universities."

When the Labour government under Prime Minister David Lange changed the Education Act, it allowed competition from private providers for the first time – some of whom were quite generously treated, Alaric says.

"They were able to set themselves up and pick and choose the subject they taught and the more expensive courses, like welding and nursing (which are high cost) were left to the Polytech to run."

With the abandonment of the apprenticeship scheme, training boards were wiped and the situation changed again. "It was pushed over to the industry to do the training. The government downsized a lot of public services, like the railways, the Ministry of Works and forestry. All of those courses went down because the numbers became less viable. The Māori trade training courses also collapsed and so there was void."

A new regime

Personally, Alaric laments the demise of the pre-apprentice courses, which were another New Zealand first - an innovation he was particularly proud of. "We looked at the students who were coming from secondary school who felt they'd like to be tradesmen but didn't know what sort. We started up a pre-trades course, where we gave them a taster. We tried to make it realistic, starting classes at 8 o'clock, and they went out into the industry for a whole week."

He says that instead of the usual one day per week training previously tried, these kids would go into a job for a full five days.

"The first two days they would be practically useless to employers who weren't allowed to pay them. The third day, they should be breaking even and on the last day, they should be productive."

Though people doubted it would work, the pre-trade courses were highly successful. "We would have students coming in thinking they would be motor mechanics – which, at the time, was the sex-appeal course for teenagers - and then they'd find that they would rather be car painters, things there were no normal training in Taranaki for. We were very proud of that."

In 2001, the noble old New Plymouth Polytechnic was rebranded to become the Western Institute of Technology in Taranaki. If asked to make an observation on the health of WITT today, Alaric is reluctant to comment or criticise.

"I think what they forgot," he says gently, "is that students bring in the money. It was the tutor that made your money and you kept your admin down to a minimum. We had a very loyal and happy staff."