School badge, St Cuthbert's College

Arya Naidu is one of the participants in the Collecting Childhood Project, a collection development project which aims to represent the diverse experiences of young people growing up in Aotearoa New Zealand. Te Papa collected objects from Arya in 2012 and 2016, and she selected this as one of the objects to represent her life in 2023. 

Arya attends St Cuthbert’s College, a private girl’s school in Epsom. She studies French and Business in addition to the compulsory subjects of Maths, Science, English, Social Studies, and Physical Education. She also does rotations each term of Worldviews, Careers, and Technology. Next year, in Year 11, Arya is planning on taking Year 12 Calculus, English with Writing, all three sciences, French, and History. She doesn’t like Maths very much, as she is taking a year above maths and finds it quite difficult. Her favourite subjects are French and English. Arya has won an academic award every year.

Initially Archana and Vijay chose St Cuthbert’s College for Aanya, their older daughter, and Arya joined her sister there. They asked Arya to try the school out, and if she did not like it, she had the option of going to a co-ed school. But Arya loves going to St Cuths and feels that it is a good learning environment for her.