Kia ora tatou,

Nau mai, hoki mai ki te kura o Highfield.

Welcome back to Highfield School and to Term 1 2022. I trust all whānau had a fun filled and relaxing holiday. We are looking forward to welcoming all students back to school on Monday. We will be holding a powhiri at 10am on Monday. To watch it live, please visit the school facebook page or follow this link.

At the start of Term 3 2019 I became Principal of Highfield School with very little experience of leading a Primary School but with an exciting plan in my mind and I believe we have gone a long way to achieve it.

Our very recent ERO report is proof of the incredible journey Highfield has made over the last two and a half years. Please read the summary below and the full report can be accessed on our website.

Highfield School has made progress in addressing its priorities for improvement. Board members, the principal and teachers are working together to ensure positive outcomes for students. The school is now collecting reliable learning information to inform classroom and school-wide planning. Collaborative practices are successfully supporting an improvement focus likely to improve and sustain student progress and achievement.

The school has made sufficient progress to transition into ERO’s Evaluation for Improvement Process.

We are all extremely proud of this achievement.

My next decision has been very challenging to make, but after lots of deep reflection I feel that the time is right to move aside and allow a new principal to build on these solid foundations and take the school to another level. For me this has been an incredible experience and I feel that I have achieved more than I set out to do. I have learnt lots about who I am and what I stand for. However, a huge part of me misses the classroom and whilst I am young enough I would like to go back. I have been lucky to secure a job as the careers, gateway and star coordinator at Opihi College and this new role will start in Term 2.

I would like to thank everyone for their continued support and encouragement during my time at Highfield, particularly through the constant changes due to COVID 19.

I am an extremely conscientious person and I will continue to drive and lead our school with energy and determination.

My recent newsletter outlined our Red response, but we will work hard to ensure Highfield tamariki receive a fantastic education and as many different and new opportunities as possible.

During our teacher-only days this week I have had the opportunity to watch our new staff and I am excited to see how they have quickly settled in and brought a level of experience and youth which will have such a positive impact on our school culture. A huge thanks to our board who have helped to fund an extra teacher. Therefore, making our class sizes smaller and enabling growth over the year.

Yesterday our staff came together to develop our pedagogy around structured literacy. We had an extremely informative day, focusing on the science of reading, orthographic mapping, principles of structured literacy, assessment and how to explicitly teach all elements through scope (content) and sequence (order). All of our staff will use an inquiry based approach to question what we are doing to create consistent evidence based educational pathways. We will be sharing this process with all whānau part way through term 1.

This year you will hear a lot about our Highfield Values Pathway and teachers will be explicitly teaching the different stages. These values align with everything we feel that is important at Highfield School and will help to build solid school foundations and fantastic students. Please take some time to look at them. We encourage you to use them at home too.

Thanks once again. I totally understand how difficult it is to absorb our Highfield Red setting, but we want to ensure that we prioritise the wellbeing and safety of our teachers so that they remain healthy and in turn our school will continue to provide face to face learning.

If you have any concerns or questions please feel free to contact me.

Nga mihi

Stu