From the Senior Leadership Team

Teachers' industrial action continues next week, with two year levels rostered home each day from Monday to Thursday. Teachers have been asked to ensure that students, particularly seniors studying NCEA, have sufficient work to complete while at home to help mitigate the impact this is having on our students' learning. Please contact your child's teacher directly if you have any questions about the work set.

A reminder that it is illegal to vape (or smoke) at school or on the school buses. We take a very strict approach to students who breach this law, which could result in stand-downs and suspensions for repeat offenders. Please ensure that your child is not bringing vaping devices to school. Students found vaping on the bus will, at minimum, be banned from riding on the bus, and will have to find alternative ways of getting to school each day. We are also going to be trialling a new vape detector next week and if this is successful, we will look at installing more of these in our toilets next term. For more information on vaping, please see this link.

We are reviewing all of our EOTC (Education Outside The Classroom) policies this term.  Please click here to access our school policies. The username is 'otamatea', and the password is 'bickerstaffe'. Your feedback is welcome.

Maths Tutorials will be running  each Tuesday and Thursday first interval in D1 till the end of this term. They will begin again in Term 3.

We are extremely proud of Denika Clooney and Morgan Bull who competed on Friday at the NZSS Cross Country in Palmerston North. Denika placed an impressive 6th out of 100 runners in the junior girls section with a time of 11.28.50 for her 3km race. Morgan placed a credible 90th out of 184 runners with a time of 22.49.63 for his 6km race.

Inter Iwi rivalry is mounting as sports results start to come in.  Current placing are  

First – Ngāpuhi 44 points          Second – Whātua 34 points          Third – Arawa – 29 points          Fourth – Maniapoto 25 points

Coming up, Iwi pride is on the line with the school cross country, basketball and the fiercely contested Haka/Waiata competition all taking place before the end of the term.  The table below shows all the results to date.

With over 50 students enrolled in our Gateway programme this year, our Gateway coordinator is very busy organising work placements, courses and theory standards for our senior students. She has also had to apply for extra funding as we have ten more students than last year enrolled.  This is testament to the value of this programme in helping students bridge the gap between school and employment in their chosen field.  Gateway generally works in conjunction with our Pathways course, where students complete some compulsory standards on things like career options, time management, budgeting, writing a CV and other important skills.  When these are completed, the Pathways and Gateway staff work with students to source relevant standards from other providers. These have included butchery, hair and beauty, animal care, arborist skills, IT, and trade papers for electricians, mechanics, builders, among other areas.  Short courses are organised and funded through Gateway to give students important workplace skills such as first aid, bartending, infrastructure, heights safety, adventure tourism, etc. Students are also supported in gaining their driver's licence with defensive driving courses, driving standards and transport to sit their learner's licence.  We would like to acknowledge some of the fantastic employers who have agreed to host our students for their work experience.  Work placements have already commenced with NorthPower, Rodney Marine, Maungaturoto Butcher, Paparoa Primary School, Grant van Dalsum Electrical, Aborcare, Engtech, Elevated Media, Kalon Hair Salon, Reyahn Leng Electrical, TVNZ, and Lee's boatbuilders and many others are organised to start in the coming weeks.  Please support these businesses where possible and if you would like to offer a work placement at your business please get in touch with our gateway coordinator via helen.anderson@otamatea.school.nz