Kia ora whānau

Year 7 students are enjoying their activity days and it is lovely to hear that these are really supporting students to settle into the school, make friends and develop a sense of belonging. There is one more week of activities and we are hopeful that the great weather will continue. Thank you very much to our Year 7 teachers and Tim Evers for all the organisation. I know they have really appreciated the support they have received from parents/whānau.

The one day Summer Tournament, held on Tuesday 9 March, involving intermediate schools, was a great success, with about 130 students being involved. Fortunately, the sudden deluge of rain did not come any earlier in the day! Many thanks to Tim and all the staff for the hard work involved in selecting and training students for this competition. Again, it was great to see so much support from parents/whānau. We are aware that your child may not want you to be as involved in school as you were in primary school. Coming along and watching them compete in sports competitions or being a parent/whānau help is a really good way to keep that involvement in your child’s education, as well as being a lovely way to meet other students, parents/whānau.

The BOT and myself are successfully working with the Ministry of Education to provide the best possible physical environment for our school for the future. It is a slow process but the BOT will inform you soon about the long term plan for rebuilding/refurbishing the school.

Next Tuesday, 23 March we will be doing a practice lockdown with our students. We will send you more information about this. We practice this each year. It will be sensitively managed and should not be an anxious situation for our students but if you have any concerns or queries, please contact your child’s teacher or myself.

This year we have a significant focus on what it means to be a good citizen both locally and globally. You will receive more information about this in the weeks to come. One area in which we do need your support is teaching our students to be considerate and safe when they are travelling to and from school. We expect that students go straight home after school unless there has been a prior agreement made with another parent. We are concerned that some students are not arriving home till well after 4.00 pm. Due to behaviour issues that have occurred in the past, we do not allow students to go to McDonalds after school unless they are with a parent. If they go home, get changed out of their Heaton uniform and you are happy for them to then go to McDonalds that is obviously your decision as a parent. We are finding that when students do not go straight home, they are more likely to get into strife in the community. You will be aware that young people in their early adolescence, especially when in an unsupervised group, will sometimes make poor decisions. For example getting involved with vaping is a big concern at present and typically this happens after school. This is rife in secondary schools at the moment and we need to protect our young people from getting involved in this harmful behaviour. We would greatly appreciate you talking to your child about these issues.

Ngā mihi

Andrea Knight, Principal