Principal's News

Senior Prizegiving: This afternoon we hosted our 2022 senior prize-giving and it was a wonderful celebration of the outstanding achievements of our senior students, and an acknowledgement of the hard-work they have done this year. It was also an opportunity to farewell our year 13s for whom today is their last official day of school. Well done to our all prizewinners - especially to our Dux Billie and our proxime accessit Alana, and to our new head prefects John and Carla. Tino pai!

Leavers Dinner: Our year 13s organised their end of year leavers dinner at the Three Furlongs Bar and Grill in Kaiwaka on Thursday night. It was a lovely evening and each year 13 received a "most likely to.." award which were well received. All teachers present also got a signed, 2022 leavers mug  - a lovely gesture that shows just how mature and thoughtful these students are. Thank you for organising this Billie and Michael.

Study Leave, Tutorials and NCEA Examinations: Senior students will now know if they have been granted study leave from Monday onwards. Those not on study leave need to continue to attend school until they have completed outstanding work, and earned their additional NCEA credits. These students will be granted study leave as and when these credits are earned. Monday sees the start of the end of year NCEA examinations. Students must arrive on time, be well prepared, in full school uniform and with their examination admission slips. Teachers are offering a number of tutorials during the exam period and I strongly encourage students to attend these, in full school uniform. 

Rotary: At assembly on Wednesday we were very fortunate to have Les Kenworthy Thomson, the Maungaturoto and Districts Rotary club president in attendance. Les presented two cheques to our school, one for $2800 to support our Duke of Edinburgh students, and the other for $2000 for the William Pike Challenge programme. We are very grateful for this support and I know it will make a difference to the many students who participate in these very valuable programmes. We also marked the occasion of our 99th and 100th DOE gold awards - to Alana and Sarah, an incredible result and testament to the hard work and dedication that Mrs Bruce has invested into this programme over the past 15 year.

World Teachers Day: Congratulations to Mr Buksh who was nominated by one of his students (Jacob) for a World Teachers Day award. Mr Buksh was selected as one of the winners and received a box of goodies as his prize. According to Jacob, Mr Buksh is his favourite teacher because he makes all of his mathematics lessons a lot of fun. Well done to Jacob and Mr Buksh!

COVID: A reminder that COVID continues to circulate throughout our community so please remain vigilant. Positive cases still need to self-isolate for 7 days but asymptomatic household contacts can return to school subject to daily RATs. If your child displays COVID symptoms at school, it remains our policy to contact parents/caregivers to collect their child as soon as possible. We do have spare RATs available if needed.

Chromebooks 2023: A reminder that all year 10 to 13 students will need to bring a Chromebook in a hard shell case to school each day from the start of 2023. We encourage you to support our amazing local supplier 100% Fergus Appliances for your Chromebook purchase, but we have also partnered with PB Tech and Cyclone who have some good deals available. See our website: Our School => Student Chromebooks for more details.

Policy Review: Each term a number of school policies come up for review, as part of our triennial review programme. If you wish to provide any recommendations on these policies, please click on this link, The username is Otamatea, and the password is bickerstaffe. We value your feedback.

Dirk Smyth
Principal