Nau mai haere mai, talofa lava, mālō e lelei, kia orana, warm greetings to all parents, caregivers and whanau

Today we finished the first full week of classes following on from a beautiful powhiri on Monday to welcome our new students, parents and staff. The school has a waiata gifted to it and students and staff sang with confidence. It is great to see it becoming established as ours to celebrate and support our speakers. Thank you to Whaea Adrienne, Mrs Laura-Jean Peawini and our whanau parents for organising and supporting us in the powhiri which will continue to be the annual formal event to open the school year. As we celebrated Waitangi Day yesterday we are reminded how privileged we are to be able to engage with Maori protocols and ceremonies and with our whanau to mark important times in life and our school journey.

We are hoping our Year 9 students and others new to the school are settling in and becoming more familiar with surroundings and their teachers. Remind your daughter they have many people they can go to for help – their classroom teacher, their ako teacher, their year level dean and the older students, especially the prefects who will be making it a mission to be out and around the school talking with the younger students. Assemblies will be held every Friday from now on as a chance to come together regularly as a community. Today our Head Girl Isla Clarkson had the opportunity to introduce the student leader team to the school, especially to junior students who were not at senior prizegiving for the announcement and to set out their ideas about what is important to them this year. Isla spoke about a focus on connections of all kinds and wanting to ensure all students here feel connected to the school and each other.

It is important that you as parents feel connected too and thank you to all the Year 9 parents who attended the social function to welcome you to the school and to meet each other. We will be aiming to use a more social format to engage parents with the school over the year. We have a whanau hui on 25 February at 6pm and a Pasifika parents fono evening to be advised.

On another note, the Education Review Office will be visiting the school for the week of the 17th February. In gathering information and data for ERO, I was impressed with the work staff do here to make a difference to students and accelerate their learning where it is needed. The NCEA results from 2019 are excellent – 90.6% achieved Level 1, 98.9% Level 2, 90.7% Level 3, 78.8% University Entrance and 16 scholarships were awarded at NCEA Level 3. At Level 1 100% of students gained Literacy and 99% gained Numeracy. Congratulations to our scholarship winners:

• Rosemary Walbom - English (Outstanding)
• Anna Champion - Classical Studies
• Milla Batten - English and Geography
• Cindy Kuang - Biology and Chemistry
• Charlotte Partington - Economics
• Rhiannon Hewett - Physics
• Sarah Bates - Accounting and Economics
• Lulu Huang - Economics
• Harriet Murray - English
• Laura Somerville - English and Geography
• Yuhan Chi - Chemistry and Calculus

Ngā mihi nui

Christine O’Neill