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

Well, this is the term. This is the term when it all finally comes together. This is the term when we finally move into the second stage of our whole school rebuild. Every time I walk through these buildings as they near completion I feel more and more excited, more and more confident that our original design will deliver for our rangatahi, more confident that our designs will deliver for our staff, more confident that these buildings will deliver for you our community.

I continue to receive wonderful compliments from the most unexpected of quarters about how well our new buildings are working. People comment with no prompt whatsoever on the calm and focussed learning environments that we have. I must confess to being very irritated at the criticism of school rebuilds that abounds in the media, almost all of it on the back of no real research at all, it would seem. Our new buildings aren’t a big open barn in which children can get lost. And neither are they a series of single cell classrooms in which teaching practise is privatised or isolated so that no-one ever knows what is going on, and students and staff can never collaborate.

You may well have heard me use my favourite Sir Winston Churchill saying before: “We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us”. That is happening here and now. Our tamariki are gaining the benefits of staff collaborating more and more, they are gaining the benefits of tuakana teina as older students help to nurture younger students. These buildings are allowing us to see greater and greater possibilities for our Curriculum Transformation Project, as we develop a junior curriculum that will help all children to find their passions, to develop those passions, and to achieve outcomes that better reflect their true capabilities and realise their enormous potential.

That was a long winded way of saying that we are looking forward to our shift into these new spaces in September. I hope you can see that such a shift is a very complex task, and hence our decision to tag two days as ‘learning from home’ days. This is necessary to make sure that we can minimise disruption to our students’ learning. Thank you for your support and cooperation in this regard.

Our NCEA internal standards data shows that achievement at the Merit and Excellence levels is now creeping ahead of past years. We are pushing students more and more effectively to be the best that they can. We are continuing to say that ‘just enough is not good enough’. We want our rangatahi to be their best. This also takes a dedicated staff, and we have just that. Every day that I turn up to work I feel privileged to be able to work alongside such dedicated professionals.

The buildings are a part of the equation, but so too are the changes that our curriculum transformation project is bringing, and so too is our Manaiakalani ‘Learn Create Share’ work, and the use of Chromebooks. I keep reminding everyone that ‘Learn Create Share’ and the use of Chromebooks is allowing us to accelerate writing achievement by twice national averages, and reading and maths progress by one and a half times the national averages. This is making a difference. Don’t forget that we can help if you need assistance to purchase a Chromebook for your child. It is so important, so powerful.

We are so thrilled that you entrust your tamariki to our care, and that you are sharing this amazing journey with us. Thank you.

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 on education at Hornby High School, and more generally, on my blog at https://whakataukihewakaekenoa.blogspot.co.nz/

Nga mihi nui

Robin Sutton

Tumuaki