The compulsory beginning age for primary schooling is six. Parents, however, are permitted to enrol their children at the age of five and 97 per cent now do so. In many other countries children beginning school are enrolled either annually or half-yearly, but it has long been accepted in New Zealand that children can be enrolled on their fifth birthday. Thus school rolls increase steadily during the year, and the heaviest demand for teachers is in the third term. Another effect is that children who are enrolled in June or later can, if they make progress well above the average, move into Standard 1 after 18 months in the infant classes (Primers 1, 2, 3, and 4) and ultimately begin post-primary work in Form III at the age of 12. Most children, however, are 13 when they reach Form III.

The New Zealand system has six primary classes above the primers — Standards 1, 2, 3, and 4 – and then Forms I and II. The majority of children have all their primary schooling from Primer 1 to Form II in one school. In a number of places, however (mainly in large centres), pupils who have completed the work of Standard 4 are transferred to central two-year institutions known as intermediate schools, the largest of which are planned for about 600 pupils. After the age of eleven, children are ready to make quite marked advances in scholastic work. When several hundred of them in this age group are brought together in one school, special programmes can be devised for varying abilities, and fast-learning and slow-learning classes formed. Some specialist teaching — in art, for example, and often in music, science, and physical education — is introduced, while in some intermediate schools optional subjects like mathematics or a foreign language are taught. As intermediates are consolidated schools, it is possible to provide them with a library, an assembly hall, an art and craft room, woodwork and metalwork rooms, and homecraft rooms. The cost of providing such facilities in each individual primary school would be very great indeed. Intermediate schools were for some years the subject of considerable controversy in New Zealand among both parents and teachers, but are now accepted as part of the Dominion's educational structure. There are at present 81 intermediate schools and others are being built or planned.