Principal's Message - T4 Wk4

Tēnā koe

It is hard to believe that we have said good-bye to our Year 12 and 13 students whose external NCEA exams begin on Monday of next week. Our Year 12 and 13s are an awesome group of students and it was fantastic to be able to celebrate their achievements over the past few weeks at the Arts, Cultural & Sports Awards, Leavers Assembly, Leavers Dinner and Senior Prizegiving on Monday. A huge thank you to the hundreds of parents, caregivers, whānau and community members who attended these events to celebrate the achievements of our students. Completing Year 13 is a major milestone and I was very proud to hear of the next steps in our student's learning journeys with the vast majority of our Year 13 students continuing on to tertiary level education.

Today we had multiple students involved in EAST Day, which continues to grow from strength-to-strength. It is outstanding to see the numbers of students involved in community and extra-curricular activities continue to grow. Our numbers of students involved in the Student Volunteer Army continues to grow by the week while we have had the biggest number of junior students ever involved in the Children's University this year. I am looking forward to seeing these students graduate at the Town Hall later this month!

At this time of the year, the focus of the Senior Leadership Team is not just on the remaining weeks of term 4, but planning and staffing for 2024. Following the decision by Mr. Knops to resign his position, we have carried out a leadership restructure of the Senior Leadership Team and will move to a flat structure of Principal and four Deputy Principals. We will be making appointments to these positions in the coming weeks. Earlier this week we appointed a highly experienced technology teacher, Mike Pearce, to replace Mr. Willis. Mike previously was a technology teacher and Head of Faculty at Ashburton College and Mt. Hutt College and is returning to teaching after a recent career break. We are looking forward to the expertise that he will bring with him and how it will enhance our technology programmes. With the introduction of the CAA (a high-stakes online test in literacy, writing and numeracy which students must pass to be awarded NCEA credits from next year), we will be appointing a teacher to work intensively with students whose level of literacy has been identified as a possible barrier to achievement. We will have more information about this later this term when an appointment has been made. I have been awarded a TeachNZ Principal's Sabbatical Award for Term 3 next year and will be away from school for the term. As part of my sabbatical I will be researching school systems and structures which promote future-focused learning. I will be spending some time visiting schools both here and overseas which will help inform the next steps in our kura's learning journey.

Enrolments for international students next year continue to grow and our recent marketing trip to Europe has been highly successful with multiple students already booked in for next year, particularly from the beginning of term 3 which coincides with the end of the northern hemisphere school year. We are in need of more homestay families so if you are interested in hosting an international student next year, short or long-term, please make contact with Noelia, our amazing Homestay Coordinator - homestaycoordinator@ellesmere.school.nz

The end of the school year is fast approaching. There are a number of key dates which you may need to be aware of:

• 16th November - Ministry of Education/PPTA Teacher-Only Day
• 1st December - Year 11 Prizegiving - last day of school for Year 11
• 4th December - Exhibition Evening
• 8th December - Junior Prizegiving - last day of school for Years 7-10

I look forward to being able to catch up with some of you at the coming school events!

Ngā mihi

Ronan Bass

Tumuaki/Principal