Kia ora koutou. Talofa. Kia Orana. Malo e lelei. Bula Vinaka. Fakaalofa atu. Namaste. Kumusta. Haere mai ki Te Kura Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka. Warm greetings to the Hornby High School community.

When our own children were at school, I clearly recall wanting to know what their schools stood for. And I have to say it wasn’t always clear. For you as whānau, parents, caregivers, and students, at Te Kura Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka Hornby High School I want to make sure that there is no doubt about what we stand for.

So what do we think is most important?

Of greatest priority is the need for solid respectful relationships for every learner. We want every learner to have a ‘learning advisor’, specifically their ’wānanga advisor’, with whom they build a strong relationship, someone who walks their journey with them through their education. Relationships are the vital first ingredient.

Accepting and celebrating every young person’s culture is essential if we are to set every learner up for success.

We are driven by the need to ensure equity for all learners. Everyone deserves the chance to grow and learn, and to access the resources necessary for that to happen.

This leads us on to our shared values of commitment, achievement, resilience, and respect (we call these our CARR values). All groups need a commonly accepted set of values, which are given effect through rites, rituals, rules, and expectations. We try to make sure that these values are at the centre of all of our interactions with students, and with each other.

We want every learner to feel that their individual needs matter. We think that developing creativity is an important piece of the mahi required to do that, and so our vision to be ‘he puna auaha a centre of creative excellence’. This supports our Manaiakalani focus, our ‘pedagogy’ (our way of causing learning) ‘learn create share’. Creativity is one of the key things that makes us human, along with our ability to empathise, to understand how other people might feel, and why. We are educating our young people to take their place in a complex and demanding world, and it will be our creativity and our humanity that give each and every one of us the best chance of doing that.

That doesn’t mean that we will always be successful at meeting those individual needs, life is full of compromises. However we are committed to trying.

We get our best chance at making all of this happen right now if we all commit to the idea of school as a physical place at which our young people are present every day. You give your child their best chance in this life if you make sure that they attend school, every day, for the full day.

Together we can do this.

These are the things we stand for. As they say, ‘if you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for everything’. At Te Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka Hornby High School, there’s no danger of that .. we know what we stand for.

Please make sure you follow us on Facebook for the latest and most up to date news https://www.facebook.com/hornbyhighschool/ , and on our website www.hornby.school.nz . You can also follow my thinking our education journey at Hornby High School, and more generally, on my blog at https://whakataukihewakaekenoa.blogspot.co.nz/

Kia tau te mauri

Robin Sutton