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Andrea Knight, Principal

Office @ Heaton —

Kia ora whānau

We have come to the end of another term which was packed with great opportunities for students to get involved in a range of activities and teams in the school.

The weather has been kind to us and the Hagley Sports Competition has gone ahead every Tuesday afternoon except for one wet day. This competition is a big part of our year long sports programme with so many students involved in competitive teams or if they remain at school, having outside coaches coming to work with them. A big thank you to Tim Evers for all the organisation which is huge and to our teachers and parents who coach and manage teams.

Congratulations to the four Jump Jam teams who competed in the Jump Jam Strictly and All- Stars competition last week. All the teams did extremely well and had a lot of fun. Well done to Heaton Ice who won the Strictly, Year 7/8 section. A lot of time and hard work went into coaching these teams and organising costumes. Thank you very much to Jenny Halligan, Helen Schulte and Adelaide White.

Well done to all the students involved in The Great Technology Challenge. They certainly had an interesting construction challenge to undertake. Thank you to Mark Greaves for organising this opportunity for our students.

Yesterday an amazing Market Day was held, organised by Year 8 teachers and students. There was a vast array of upcycled items for sale with all the funds going to the 40 Hour Famine. Students worked in groups to come up with creative, interesting and useful items, some of which sold out in the first 5 minutes of the Market! I know the Year 8 students and their teachers really enjoyed the purposeful and authentic learning that occurred. Well done to everyone involved.

Thank you to those of you who completed our survey about Reporting to Parents. We will be analysing the feedback and will report back to you about our thoughts and actions moving forward.

You will be aware the Primary and Intermediate School Principals have not settled their collective contract. The following has been written by NZEI for principals to share with their communities. Industrial action will not affect students, staff or the general running of the school. The action is targeted to impact on the Ministry of Education.

Primary principals across the country have voted to reject the government’s offer for settlement of our negotiations. The government failed to make an offer that addresses our key issues. We are concerned that little is being done to ensure that being a primary principal is seen as an attractive career option.

While I’m really happy that our teachers won back parity with their secondary colleagues, the same wasn’t offered to primary principals. We think that if parity with secondary is fair for teachers, then surely it’s fair for principals.

The offer also would have seen some principals in smaller schools paid less than some teachers in larger schools. It’s important that all communities are able to attract teachers into becoming principals, and that won’t happen if they can earn more as a teacher.

As a sign of our concern we have voted to withdraw the goodwill we extend to the Ministry of Education work that is additional to our day to day role running schools. I will not be participating in any form of work programme, taskforce, meeting with or reporting to the Ministry between July 8 and August 16. I will continue my professional leadership of the school during this time.

Principals continue to hope that the government will hear us and address our issues. We are committed to continuing our campaign until they do. Personally I am grateful for the support that our parent community has shown throughout the campaign. I hope you will continue to show your support next term if it is necessary.

My best wishes for a relaxing and enjoyable holiday with your children. We look forward to coming back in Term 3 and emerge from winter and move into spring.

Ngā mihi

Andrea Knight, Principal