Northland students have been shocked and disgusted to find security cameras installed in their high school toilets, a pupil says.

The two surveillance cameras were fitted in the Year 9-11 girls' and boys' toilets at Tauraroa Area School, about 25km south of Whangarei, on Tuesday.

Principal Grant Burns said, in an email seen by the Herald, the cameras were mistakenly fixed inside the toilets rather than at their entrances where they would have overlooked a nearby area containing student lockers.

"I have already let a number of staff, parents and students know this. Steps have already been put in place to remedy this," he said in the email.

However, Year 11 student Aart Lewis said his fellow students had felt "pretty disgusted because, in the boys toilets, [the camera] looks straight onto the urinal".

"And the girls toilets, they all get changed for netball and afterschool sports in those toilets," he said.

He said it was baffling how the mistake was even made in the first place.

"Surely the people installing it would question if it was meant to go in the bathrooms or not because it is not really right," he said.

He felt the school was then slow to respond to student concerns.

While students quickly reported the cameras to teachers and a deputy principal, Lewis did not hear the school make a public statement about what was being done to fix the situation until Friday.

Students had also kept covering the camera in the boys toilet with paper, but this was removed at least three times by staff, he said.

Lewis was worried the cameras had been turned on, judging by how the papers covering them were removed so quickly, within 30 minutes to an hour on each occasion.

He felt the situation should have been handled better, given the cameras were "pretty big news for a small school".