They could be gathering rubbish. Or playing chess with the elderly. Or reading to them. Or cleaning up at the Rotorua SPCA.

Students from Rotorua's newest school are getting around.

When Rotorua Now saw them in the distance, we thought we were being approached by PD workers.

A natural assumption for it is a regular detail in all districts.

For a line of folk armed with waste bags were collecting spoilage from inside a large ditch on Frank Street, adjacent an abandoned railway line between Rotorua and Ngongotaha.

They were happy in their work, that much was obvious.

Such work is carried out every Wednesday.

They were students from Te Rangihakahaka* Centre for Science and Technology, an immersion school which opened last year for Year 1 to Year 10 pupils, the second such institution inaugurated by Ngati Whakaue.

As part of their curriculum, the students are assigned to undertake various useful tasks in the community.

'This one of them,” says Lee, a teacher who accompanied the group. 'We also go to Day Break [a centre for elderly care] and the SPCA.”

The school's pou matangirua (principal) Renee Gillies said the exercise was all about community.

'It's about where they're from, where they're going to and who their ancestors were,” Renee says.

'At the Day Break Centre, they play chess and read books with the elderly.”

Another group from the school helps out at the SPCA, tending gardens etc, a venue like the cleanup we captured this week not too far from their school off busy Lake Road.

The students also catch catfish, a voracious killer of trout life in Lake Rotorua, off Mokoia Island. They are filleted and eaten, says Renee, under direction. Apparently, they make delicious fare.

'They are beautiful fish (to eat), you'd never have known.”

*Te Rangihakahaka is named after a significant site on Mt Ngongotaha. The school opened in February last year amid much ceremony. It teaches science, technology, engineering and mathematics), collectively known as STEM.