Ashburton District offers a number of educational options for both local and overseas students....

With two excellent secondary schools, 18 primary schools,  Aoraki Polytechnic and two Universities, the Ashburton District has it all!

Ashburton College – co-educational school of some 1100 students, is well recognised for its academic achievement. The school hosts a number of international exchange students each year as well as private foreign students. Ashburton College has an excellent music department, a marae and a cultural group, that provides a strong focus for cultural learning and activity on campus. The College provides an extensive range of extracurricular activity, especially in sports. The school also has a large community division, which encourages adult academic learning in languages, arts, crafts and manual skills. 

Mount Hutt College, Methven offers comprehensive co-educational education from Year 7 to Year 13 in a rural, family orientated secondary school. The school offers an outdoor pursuits course to Year 13 students and all students can join the snow ski programme running each week during the season.

Ashburton Intermediate, The Intermediate caters for Year 7 and 8 students, and has a wide range of high quality balanced programmes suited to the needs and aspirations of all the students, along with wonderful resources, sports and skills programmes.

There are 18 primary schools in Ashburton District and a full range of pre-school facilities, including day care, playcentres, kindergartens, Kohhanga Reo and Montessori.

The Aoraki Polytechnic has an Ashburton Campus, which provides study opportunities in a variety of subjects, offering national certificates and dipolmas.  

Two highly respected universities are within an hour’s drive of Ashburton:-

Lincoln University is located in the fertile Canterbury Plains in the unspoilt South Island of New Zealand, it is perhaps not surprising that Lincoln University offers a range of courses in the environment, resource management and primary production areas that is unsurpassed by any other New Zealand university.

Canterbury University is located in Christchurch, the largest city in New Zealand’s South Island.  The university’s modern and well-equipped facilities are spread across a spacious campus, with easy access to central city.