There was a wonderful atmosphere at school last Friday for our 58th annual Swimming Sports day. This year we only had swimmers at the pool, with timetabled classes running for non swimmers. The music was great, and the students were incredibly supportive of each other, looking fantastic in their iwi colours.  Congratulations to all participants and well done to Whātua for being crowned top iwi on the day. Thank you to all the parents, whānau and caregivers who helped on the day, or came down to support our students.

Today we had a staff only day to introduce KIVA to our team. KIVA is a bullying prevention programme that we are introducing to our school to ensure we are all better equipped to help minimise bullying incidents at school. It is research based and supports the NZ Health and PE curriculum. There are three main aspects to KIVA: prevention, intervention and monitoring. There will be further training for the year 7 and 8 syndicate teachers next Wednesday afternoon, after which all year 7 and 8 students will begin to receive regular timetabled lessons that will include what bullying is, how to report incidents of bullying and the impact that bullying has on one another. The baseline survey data collected from these students shows that our students are experiencing significantly less bullying than the national average, but we are determined to do more to counter this national problem. Our plan is to roll this programme out to year 9s next year.

There was a lovely article in this week's Kaipara Lifestyler about our year 13s' fundraising efforts to support Relay for Life. These students will be joining Otamatea High School staff and many other teams at Trigg stadium in Whangarei on the 1st and 2nd of April for this year's event. Relay for Life is all about celebrating cancer survivors in our communities. Our year 13s had a successful bake sale on Tuesday, raising hundreds of dollars for this worthwhile cause. Well done!

The Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) has announced the date of a nationwide one-day strike, to take place on Thursday 16th March 2023. Should this strike go ahead, Otamatea High School will be closed for instruction, but will be able to supervise students if parents/caregivers need us to look after their children on the day. We will send out more information about this early next week.

Year 9 and 10 Teaching and Learning: Over the past two years we have introduced a cross-curricular programme for Year 9 which includes the four umbrella topics of Discovering the Pacific, Gadgets and Inventions, Pandemic and Kaipara. As there are some fairly major changes being introduced in NCEA, starting with Level 1 next year, we have realigned our Year 10 courses to better prepare students for the updated standards. In both the Year 9 and Year 10 courses we have allocated credits for different assessments and will be grading student achievement using achieved, merit and excellence descriptors. Students will work towards a certificate in Y9 and a diploma in Y10. They will need to achieve at least 80 of the 120 credits available over the year to receive these awards. Students who achieve over 50 merit or excellence credits will have their award endorsed with merit or excellence respectively. These changes have many similarities to Level 1-3 NCEA and so will help to familiarise students and whānau with how NCEA works ahead of time and should also help students to set SMART goals for their academic achievement.

Te Whatu Ora HEADS Assessment Year 9: Beginning next week all year 9 students have the opportunity to participate in the HEADS assessment programme offered Te Whatu Ora, Community Clinical services / Rural and Family Community Health Services.  The assessments will take place at school one day a week for the rest of the year meaning your child may not be assessed until term two or three. Parents/whānau of Otamatea High School Year 9 students will recieve the lHEADS letter via email 10 March.

The following details have been provided by Kiel Boyd, Specialty Clinical Nurse, from Te Whatu Ora.

"Kia Ora, students in year nine will have brought home a letter about the Year Nine 9 Heads assessment. (whanau of OHS Year 9 parents will recieve the letter via email 10 March)The aim of the assessment is to identify any health or wellbeing needs that students may have, so that we can support them and their families in accessing support services. This will help to ensure that students are in class ready and able to learn. Every student is asked for their consent before an assessment is undertaken, and has the right to decline. Parents can also withdraw their child from the programme by contacting the school and requesting that they do not participate. If you wish to withdraw your child please let the school know by the 24th of March"

Buses:  It is imperative that your child is on the bus that they are assigned to here at school.  For safety reasons we need to know which bus your child is travelling to and from school on.  If you are unsure which bus your child has been assigned, please ask them to see Mrs Coll at school, and we can make sure they are on the correct list.

From the archives:
This week features the 1st XV from 1970 (and their impressive record of wins!) and the swimming team that went to the Northland Secondary Schools' Swimming Sports in the same year.
If you have any memories, photos or articles that you think we might like for our archives, please send to huia.coll@otamatea.school.nz