The South Canterbury school has tipped over the 300 student mark for the first time in 10 years.
Principal Jo Hunnikin said it was a big milestone for the school.
"We settled in around 310 and we’ve kind of hovered at the point for the whole year.
"Next year we’re looking potentially at having between 300 and 320.
"We’ve got quite a bulge in our year 7 and 8 area.
"We’ll be moving from four classes to six classes which is a big structural change for us."
She said she could not quite pinpoint an exact reason for the surge in students.
"I don’t know if people find the region more attractive, whether it’s work opportunities or that housing is a bit cheaper.
"We’ve had a number of people move here from overseas as well and a lot of the teachers we attracted at the end of last year have moved into Waimate."
Despite receiving more students, Ms Hunnikin said they school had been finding it difficult to attract more teachers.
"We definitely need more ministry housing and more incentives to encourage [teachers], because now we’re getting the kids, but we’re not getting the teachers.
"Especially with these extra classes we are needing to find staff to fill those positions.
"That’s been a real challenge."
Despite the challenges a growing school brings, she said it was all a positive growth indicator.
"We’re getting better NCEA results and more students, it just adds that extra kind of vibrancy to the school."
Ms Hunnikin said moving into next year, a big goal for the school was to focus more on the arts.
"Obviously we will be aiming to maintain our good NCEA results but we also want to work hard to develop the arts here.
"The school has always felt a bit unbalanced being quite sports heavy.
Ms Hunnikin said the school had good sports results, but she wanted to balance that with the school’s success in the arts.
"We had the recent production of Frozen in the town which was fantastic and we did our own school production of Xanadu, which was really awesome.
"We’ve been doing a lot of work in that space this year, so we want to continue that work and consolidate all the positive things that are happening down here."
