Kia ora e te whānau 

Welcome back! I trust you had a safe and relaxing holiday break. One of the highlights of my holidays was attending the Halswell School ANZAC day parade with two of our student leaders - Hunter and Eve (pictured above). I was so impressed by the many children and young people from our community in the crowd helping to commemorate this important national day. Thank you to Catherine Fitzpatrick from our learning support team, for the beautiful job she did putting our commemorative wreath together.

It was fantastic to see all of the children walk through the gates on Monday morning. The reduction of controls at the Orange Setting certainly makes it feel like we are progressing towards normality. 

I would also like to extend a warm welcome to all new children and families who started at Halswell School Te Kura o Te Tauawa this week. This includes our latest New Entrant start-up class, T3, which will be based in Ahuriri and taught by Kathryn Hartnell and Rachel Davies.

Thank you to all parents and children for respecting our protocols around mask-wearing and remaining outside learning centres.  As previously communicated, we will continue to keep a close eye on what is happening in terms of case numbers within our community and hope to be in a position to reduce our controls further over the coming weeks.  

Looking forward to the term ahead, we have several exciting activities and events scheduled. These include the Years 5-8 Cross Country at Halswell Quarry, Cycle Safety for Years 5&6, Bully-free NZ week, Years 1-4 Star Dome, and a school-wide Pause Breathe Smile programme. Our music itinerary tutors and kapa haka kaiako have also started up again, and our Years 7&8 students will return to technology lessons at Hillmorton High School this week. 

Lots to look forward to! 

Ngā mihi nui

Stuart Cameron

Principal