Tomorrow we celebrate our junior prizegiving with approximately 250 parents attending.

What a pleasure it is to be gathered together after a two-year break to celebrate our Year 9 and 10 students. I do not need to detail for you all what a challenging time the past three years have been for everyone and 2022, in particular. Yet we will be here on the last day of school for the year and we have managed through it together. I want to thank everyone for their hard work and support during alert levels, traffic light restrictions, online and remote learning. I want to extend a huge thank you to our staff for the significant extra effort this took and to our parents for your ongoing support through the pandemic. Thank you to our students who have done so well continuing their learning through a very strange and challenging year in all our lives. Thank you to them for their hard work, excellent behaviour, kindness and care, and support of each other and our staff.

Let us look with hope to 2023 and the opportunity to re-engage with all those activities which bring school, students and families together – celebrations, prizegivings, concerts, sports and the myriad of events which make schools communities and not just buildings where we learn.

These weeks are a time of waiting and anticipation – young children waiting for Santa Claus, teenagers waiting for holidays and summer sun, and adults waiting for family time and extended rest and rejuvenation. We wait for the New Year as a time of new beginnings, fresh starts and regeneration of energy. We are happy and joyous to be free to relax with our families, to be free of routine and our study and work lives. We are also full of hope for next year.

Our junior students will start thinking about their next year of school life and new challenges, moving on from being a new year 9 into year 10 and moving from year 10 into the senior school. I encourage our students in whatever they do to stay true to our school values - manaakitanga, aroha, whanaungatanga and rangatiratanga. Show care and respect to others, have compassion for those with less or who are suffering, treasure where they belong, those who have gone before them and the relationships which are important to them, and be a brave young person who has the courage to stand strong and do what is right.

I wish you all a very happy Christmas, a joyful New Year and a restful holiday break. Safe travels to all those families travelling away and let us all appreciate out families and friends as we join them over dinners and barbeques.

Kia hora te marino

Kia whakapapa pounamu te moana

Hei huarahi mā tātou i te rangi nei

Aroha atu, aroha mai

Tātou i a tātou katoa

May peace be widespread

May the sea be like greenstone

A pathway for us all this day

Give love, receive love

Let us show respect for each other

Kia kaha, kia maia, kia manawanui

No reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa