Tena koutou

How quickly this year has gone and we often forget to take the time to reflect on our own achievements and progress. This terms value focus is ‘Achievement’ and we have a number of events where we get to recognise the successes of many of our senior students before they start their NCEA external exams.

Over this week there have been presentations and awards for the Outdoor Education and Gateway programmes with the PIA presentation next week. It is great to see the wide group of students recognised for their passions in these very different areas of learning in our school.

Prize Giving

Next Wednesday is our Senior Prize Giving where we recognise and award those who have achieved the highest level academically in our school. It is our premier event for the school year and to a certain degree the culmination of student learning, which is our core business. It is a time to acknowledge the hard work of our students alongside the passion our teachers have for teaching and to reflect on what has been achieved in and outside the classroom.

This year sees a change in moving this to the afternoon so we have all our Year 10-13 students present. This means all these students can recognise the achievement of their peers and celebrate with them, as well as being inspired to strive to be their very best in the following years. I invite all parents and caregivers to attend and share in this event followed by an afternoon tea in the library.

Enrolment Zone

This week we have shared a form with all our out of zone enrollments so we can then ballot the spaces available. We will be doing this next week and should then be able to inform all families of the outcome.

New Senior Leadership for 2020

With a number of our leadership team moving on to retirement, promotion or new opportunities, we now have a new team for 2020. These individuals are all very experienced with a wide range of skills that will be invaluable to our teaching and learning direction along with building greater capacity in our teaching team.

Below is a brief overview of each member of this team and there will be more detailed profiles of each provided early next year.

Rae Coburn - Business Manager with an extensive background in the private business sector both here and in Australia.

Richard Harvey - Assistant Principal with a Social Sciences background. He has spent the previous 8 years working at the Bangkok International School.

Suzanne Pidduck - Assistant Principal with a background in English. She is currently the DP at Wellington Girls High School.

Ryan Wilson - Deputy Principal with a Health and PE background. He is currently the Head of Middle School at Ashburton College.

We are very much looking forward to having them join our staff along with 5 other staff we have employed for next year.

On a personal note, I would like to thank the students, staff and community for your support over the last 5 years which with the staff changes may have led to a feeling of uncertainty and instability. In this time we have employed a large number of new staff which is significant given the short period of time that this has occurred in. With most of these changes now complete , it now means a more consistent and focused approach for the coming years which I am sure will be welcomed.

I hope to see many of you at our upcoming Senior Prize Giving next week as we celebrate our students achievements.

Noho ora Mai.

Congratulations to Acland House