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.

I am writing this newsletter column from that place of enormous satisfaction that one gets when seeing things going well. Over the past two weeks we have seen a string of amazing opportunities and work from our tamariki. Our Kapa Haka group performed at an evening in which we combined with Hornby Primary School to bring whānau together to celebrate their amazing tamariki and their talents. On the following night our Filipino community came together with the Hornby Primary School Filipino community to celebrate their culture, and their place in the world, and on the Friday evening we celebrated the graduation of 12 fantastic young people from the 2017 Project K programme.

This week I spent two days and a night with some of our Year 10 students at their annual outdoor education camp at the Boyle River Outdoor Education Centre.

In every case I was seeing young people challenged in very individual ways to dig deep into themselves, to find inner strength, to match our values of Commitment, Achievement, Resilience, and Respect. If you are wondering why I spend so much of my energy focussing on these things, it's because these things matter. Without them, achievement in any endeavour, academic, sporting, cultural, personal, is much less likely to be found.

I am reminded of the content of the Employability Skills Framework developed by employers to guide us in our work in education. Here is an explanation from their website: “Employability skills are the skills or capabilities that are needed for work. These include behaviours, attitudes, beliefs and personal qualities such as self-management and resilience. New Zealand and international employers tell us these skills are essential for getting and keeping a job. In recruiting staff, employers look for employability skills alongside educational achievement, work experience and other essential skills such as literacy, numeracy and ICT.”

It is no coincidence that the New Zealand National Curriculum is referred to as having two halves. The front half refers to the ‘soft skills’ that our young people need to develop, all of which are values based. The second half refers to the content and specific skills that our rangatahi need if they are to be successful in life.

This is not all, for we do not educate solely to create employees as if they are units of human capital that roll off a school production line ready to be absorbed into factories. We educate to support our rangatahi to be good human beings, to be compassionate and empathetic, to value the arts as well as the sciences, to be secure and happy in their sense of personal and cultural identity and their place in the world so that they can live good fulfilling lives in which they make a positive contribution to the world around them.

This is why the outdoor education camps and cultural events are important. This is why we encourage our tamariki to be creative, to grow their self confidence and their self management, their ability to collaborate with others, to be empathetic to the plight of others, to be fully human. These things are as important as their knowledge of science and maths, of languages and technologies.

This is why we have as our vision a school that is ‘A centre of creative excellence’.

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 new 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/.

And remember that we are all only a phone call away if you have any concerns.

Ngā mihi nui

Robin Sutton