Tēnā koutou e te Whānau

As part of the rebuild process, our school was gifted the full bilingual name Te Kura o Te Tauawa Halswell School by our local hapū, Te Taumutu Rūnanga. Tauawa is a shortened verison of ‘Te Tau-awa-a-Maka’, the upper tributary of the Halswell River known Nottingham Stream. It was a mahinga kai site for tuna (eels), aruhe (bracken fern), tutu, kōareare (edible part of raupō) and waterfowl. A full description of our school’s cultural narrative can be found here.

Although the school’s bilingual name was gifted to us in 2015, and is in use across the school in a number of formats, it has only recently come to our attention that we have not gone through the formal name change process required by the Ministry of Education. To complete this process, the School Board needs to follow a formal name change procedure. Part of this involves consulting with our community about formally adopting the bilingual name.

One of the strong themes to come out of last year’s community consultation process, which resulted in the development of our new vision and values, was the desire to embrace and promote biculturalism within our school. This has been included in the development of our new school logo which features our school’s full bilingual name.

Last term, the Board consulted our community about 

Ngā mihi nui

Te Kura o te Tauawa Halswell School Board