Tēnā koutou e te whānau

Thank you to everyone who took part in last week's mid-year Learning Conferences. We had a fantastic turn out this year. I want to acknowledge the hard work of our teachers both on the night and for all of the extra preparation they put in leading up to the Learning Conferences. It is a huge couple of days for our team and we certainly had a few tired teachers by the end of the week!

As you will be aware, we made several changes to the format of the Learning Conferences based on the feedback we received from last year's Assessment and Reporting survey. These changes included providing a dedicated 15-minute time slot with each child's T group teachers, maintaining the ability for children to share their learning with parents and reserving the last 5 minutes of each conference for parents to speak one on one with their T group teacher if they chose to. 

We are keen to hear what, if any, differences these changes made to your overall experience at this year's Learning Conferences. If you would like to provide any feedback please feel free to email admin@halswell.school.nz or me directly principal@halswell.school.nz.

School Investment Programme

We are making good progress with the property projects that have been funded by the Ministry of Education as part of the School Investment Programme (SIP). Under the SIP initiative, every state school in the country will receive funding for property projects based on roll size. As a large primary school, we will receive $400,000 of additional property funding.

The new astroturf path from Larsens Road was part of the SIP funding. I'm pleased to inform you that this has been completed and parents and students will now have year-long access across the field. 

Another project that we are very excited about is the construction of a new astroturf sports court on the field. This will provide a playing surface for our students to use throughout the year regardless of the field conditions. Given that this is the largest project under SIP we would like to put together a special project group to drive the planning of the new court. If you have expertise in the area of sports turf and/or have experience working with astroturf courts as a member of a local sports club, we would be keen to hear from you. If you would like to be involved please email the Office directly. 

Finally, we are beginning to see a few more cases of cold and flu-like illnesses developing this term. Please help us reduce the spread of these illnesses by keeping your child at home if they are showing any signs of sickness. Children should not return to school until they symptom-free and have fully recovered from sickness. 

Thank you for your support

Stuart Cameron

Principal