Christchurch Boy's High School is leading the way by allowing its students to take part in Movember, an annual event that aims to shed light on men's health issues.
Last month, the Movember Foundation penned a letter to principals of 178 schools across New Zealand, asking them to suspend clean-shaven policies for all of November and allow students to grow moustaches.
Boys' High headmaster Nic Hill says letting the boys participate enables them to speak up about men's health.
"It aligns with what we talk about at school about being willing to ask for help, have conversations [and] be better men," he says.
"One of the things we've been talking about with the boys is that [with] women, when they see each other, say 'how are you?', whereas men usually say 'what have you been up to?', so we don't even open ourselves up to having a conversation."
But other schools have rejected the proposal to let their boys take part in the awareness campaign.
The Ministry of Education told Newshub each individual school's board of trustees can make their own rules and guidelines when enforcing no facial hair rules.
The Movember Foundation says its strategy is to infiltrate places where the message is most needed and reduce premature deaths in men by 25 percent by 2030.
Newshub.
