Murchison Area School serves a large area. Although a large number of students are within the town itself, others come from farming communities within neighbouring valleys and travel in to school daily.

Sport is a major part of community life with teams often travelling away to other towns for competitions. This small tight-knit community prides itself on its spirit and caring nature and the healthy option it provides for its people as an alternative to city living.

The school has many major strengths, including small class sizes, up to date ICT, modern facilities with significant recent roll growth building work and new classrooms. We have just spent roughly $4 million on major upgrades to our wonderful school site. We pride ourselves on strong relationships, great community links and a wide and varied curriculum accessible and appropriate to each individual student and whanau. We focus on our inclusive nature for all students, our EOTC (Education Outside the Classroom) and our commitment to Te Reo and Tikanga, again with significant financial investment and high class staffing.

Student achievement at Murchison is extremely high from Year 1 to Year 13 and significantly above national averages including for all Area Schools, all Decile 4 schools and all schools in total.