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Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou

Welcome to Week 4 of Term 2.

I was very fortunate to be invited to join the Canterbury West Coast Principals Association to visit some schools in Sydney, as well as attend a presentation by Joanne Jarvis from the School Leadership Institute who oversees High School principals in New South Wales.

I had a number of takeaways, but as I said to our staff, it seems like although things are different we have some similarities, including problems with staffing. Overall, I think that we are doing a pretty good job here at Grey High. Of course, we are always working towards improving, but I believe that we have dedicated teachers who work really hard to provide a great range of learning experiences for our students in and out of the classroom.

Please check out the three schools I visited below:

St Clair High School

Website: https://stclair-h.schools.nsw.gov.au/

Portland Central School

(The equivalent of what we would call an area school.)

Website: https://portland-c.schools.nsw.gov.au/

Katoomba High School

Website: https://katoomba-h.schools.nsw.gov.au/

Staffing

Shona Preston, our Guidance Counsellor is “sort of” leaving us soon. However, we are very happy that she is staying on to mentor our student counsellor Judith on a Friday.

Our new, full time Guidance Counsellor starts on 29th May - We look forward to welcoming Allie Caddie to Greymouth High School.

Ka ora / Ka ako - Healthy School lunches week 6

We are now on the countdown for our Healthy School lunches. If you have not completed the google form sent to your personal email about special dietary requirements, please do so as soon as possible, or contact office@greyhigh.school.nz with any questions.

Uniform and our new School Sweatshirts

Our new school sweatshirts designed by our students are on sale from the Uniform Shop. They are $60 and very warm. We really appreciate your support with making sure that your child is in the correct uniform when they come to school. We want our first encounter with our students to be a positive one and not one where we have to talk to them about the wrong uniform.

Industrial Action

Thank you for your continued support. We want to make sure that all of our rangatahi have access to great teachers and we need to attract more teachers to our profession so we can do this.

ERO

The way ERO work with schools has changed. We really appreciate our ERO liaison who worked closely with our Senior Leadership Team and Board to look at what we are doing well, and what we need to do to improve. The process was challenging but fair and collaborative and we are happy with the agreed outcome.

Please read below the official update regarding our ERO reports:

“Te Ara Huarau is the evaluation approach that the Education Review Office (ERO) is using in our school. This is a developmental approach to evaluation where ERO and our school work together over time rather than one off reviews that happened previously. Te Ara Huarau is used in most English-medium state and state-integrated schools.

ERO maintains a regular review programme to evaluate and report on the education and care of young people in the schools. Our school worked alongside ERO to write our Profile Report. This type of report will only happen once as part of our initial engagement with Te Ara Huarau. The profile report reflects our strategic goals and a shared evaluation focus on one or more areas that are important to us as we work together to improve outcomes for all our learners. ERO, like us, have a strong focus on equity and excellence. Future reporting will show our progress and achievement towards meeting the goals we have set. Public reports like the Profile Report are published on ERO’s website.

A Board Assurance Report that shows how we are meeting regulatory and legislative Requirements has also been published.”

Samantha Mortimer

Principal Greymouth High School

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