On Thursday we were honoured by a visit from the German Ambassador to New Zealand, Herr Stefan Krawielicki.

Herr Krawielicki came to a special assembly in order to present our Principal Mrs Duthie with the plaque which formally recognises Columba’s status as a partnership school – Paschschule – with the Goethe Institut and the German Foreign Ministry. We are now one of only seven Paschschulen in New Zealand and benefit from amazing support in terms of teaching resources and scholarships for our students to go to Germany for language and cultural courses.

Two recent recipients of such scholarships, Lara Seaton and Jody Syme, gave us fascinating talks about their experiences in Frankfurt (just before Covid) and Wellington (because of Covid), where they were able to meet other students from all over New Zealand and, in Lara’s case, the world, on their respective courses.

We also heard from Siena Snow and Caitlin O’Brien (Year 13), in German, about their language learning journey at Columba, and Skyla Murray played a beautiful piece by Bach on her violin.

Finally, the students in the Hall, all of them German learners, gained a valuable insight from Herr Krawielicki about the close connections between New Zealand and Germany (140 German companies do business in New Zealand) and the many benefits of learning the most widely spoken native language in Europe.