To say we hit the ground running this year was an understatement as ERO visited in the second full week. I should have been relaxed - I spent my sabbatical in 2012 with ERO doing school visits alongside 3 of our 4 reviewers; I knew we did some things really well; I knew our results were amazing and I knew we were really well prepared.

None of that mattered.  I was still really anxious when they came because I know their ability to find the chink in a school’s armour really quickly; I know their moderation processes are rigorous; I knew of other schools in our situation who had had really challenging reviews and I also knew that having had two consecutive 4-5 year reviews we would be under intense scrutiny.  The review went well; the Board, staff and student discussions were impressive and the feedback was great, but the interminable wait for the draft review did nothing to ease my jitters.  In the end, the document arrived and we were fortunate enough to get another 4-5 year review.  It was a wonderful way to end Term 1.  Our hard work has been recognised, the approaches the school was using has been vindicated and we had bought ourselves some time to try new things before they come back again.

This year’s prizegiving saw the inaugural Te Tohu Raukura being awarded.  We were really clear at the start of the year about the criteria and we have stuck to them.  As a result 295 have been awarded this year, so congratulations to those students who gained the wee feather badge - it was not easy to get.

The first big change for next year comes as we continue to adapt to better support student and staff wellbeing.  All students will be in a wānanga class for just over an hour a week.  In Year 9 and 10 there will be 11 of them, as there are now, but this will be the same class the students are taught in.  The big changes come in Years 11 -13 where there will be 18 wānanga classes per year level and virtually every full-time staff member will have one – including all of us in the senior staff. I think we are all looking forward to having a closer relationship with a smaller group of students, working on academic mentoring and things that fall outside the normal scope of the curriculum.

Next year will also see all Year 12 and 13 students having 4 taught lessons a week and one period of tutorial time which they can use as best they see fit – after discussion with their wānanga teacher.  This will also be implemented for Year 11 later in the year.  It has been great to see a number of staff trialling it during the year, with very positive results. 

Our focus continues to be to help our students become more independent learners and better able to cope once they leave WGC.

We have also been busy helping establish our Kāhui Ako – a community of learning working alongside Karori Normal, Kelburn Normal and Northland primary schools and Wellington College. The aims of our group relate to wellbeing; cultural competency and students having greater agency over their own learning. We will start work next year and look forward to learning from and with each other over the years ahead.

We finish 2018 in good heart and I am so grateful to all of the students, staff and parent groups for the work which has helped us get where we are today.

Ehara taku toa I te toa takitahi, ēngari he toa takitini
My strength is not that of an individual but that of the collective

Julia Davidson
Principal