Macleans was the first public school in New Zealand to use the "Whanau House System". This is dividing the school up into nine 'houses'. Each house contains about 300 students in total, with two classes of 30 students in each year. These nine houses are named after some famous people from New Zealand. The names are: Batten, Mansfield, Nieto, Rutherford, Kupe, Hillary, Te Kanawa, Snell and Upham. The school began with only 4 of these houses, but has got bigger over the years. The newest house is Upham house, which opened in 2003.