The first half of the year has been a huge success for Pasifika students at CBHS. The boys worked incredibly hard on their Polyfest performance which was held at the beginning of Term 2.

Click here to watch the full performance.  Each boy has put in around 180-200 hours into this performance.  A big thank you must go out to the tutors headed by Albany Peseta and Ofa family who helped hugely with the boys’ performance uniform. The Year 13 senior students of Hosana Leota, Jack Skipps, Josh Taula, Kolisi Halatoa and Rusi Samuelu were instrumental in developing the positive culture of the group and leading the group in their performance. The group has already begun their preparation for attending the ABS Polyfest 2020 in Auckland which is the largest cultural performance festival in the Southern Hemisphere.

Academic success has also been high with Andrew Letiu and Kolisi Halatoa being recognised for their leadership at a SPACAC Emerging Leaders breakfast held by the CCC. Ulu Manu and Lio Jackson also represented the school in their respective languages of Tongan and Samoan in the Canterbury Secondary School Pasifika Speech Competition. The school also hosts Tongan language classes that is attended by various other schools across Christchurch and is going well once again. 

Spacpac PolyFest 2019 (written by John Tuipolutu - student)

Spacpac Polyfest 2019 was one of the main events in the Pasifika calendar in which Christchurch Boys’ High and a lot of other high schools participated in. This year’s CBHS poly group were tutored by Taniela Leoatoa and Albany, Moresby and Kaiva Peseta who were also our tutors in 2018. Our first practice was on January 15 with only a few boys attending, however numbers grew over the weeks to a group of 32.

One of the highlights of Polyfest this year was the three-day camp where we learned our whole performance the weekend before first official date for Polyfest, March 16th. The event was postponed until May 6th after the tragic event of the 15th. This gave us an extra month to prepare and we added more into our performance.

For the first week of Term 2 we practiced every lunchtime going over last-minute moves that we had learned. We performed on the Saturday, when we went up on stage the boys were all nervous but after the performance everyone was happy and proud of the effort they had put in.