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.

“There’s nothing quite as intoxicating as certainty”, which might translate to “it’s a damned good idea to know where you are going”. Last week the Board of Trustees met to start the conversations and the thinking about ‘where to next’ for Hornby High School. We started with a summary of where we are now, and here are some of our observations about that:

• We have just completed the redevelopment of almost all of our physical learning environments

• A major upgrade of our sports fields and outdoor sports surfaces is confirmed for 2020/2021

• Curriculum reform in the junior years of the kura is under way, focussed on enhanced wellbeing through wānanga (a focus on the front end of the curriculum), and improved student engagement in the ‘back half’ of the curriculum through the development of integrated curriculum

• The Manaiakalani pedagogy, and the affordances of digital technology, are becoming increasingly well embedded in teaching and learning across the kura, and the cluster, and have continued to show strong gains in writing achievement, and in reading and mathematics.

The wānanga reforms appear to be having the impact we wanted, with Year 7-9 students being more settled, and more connected with their teachers, with each other, and with their learning. We are now planning on extending the same concept out to our Year 10 and 11 students in 2021. The ‘back half of the curriculum’ changes are a work in progress, but early signs are that we will see the learning benefits we are after there too. The facilities that our rangatahi live and work in at our kura are amongst the best in the country, and we think we are seeing students who now understand and have greater belief in their own self worth, students who are more likely to take learning risks because they have growing faith in their own abilities to achieve. We are also seeing plenty of student work that (we believe) shows the positive impact of our vision to be ‘a centre of creative excellence’, and our ‘Learn Create Share’ pedagogy.

The question now is: where to next? We intend to ask you that big question, and here are some smaller questions you might like to think about in the meantime:

• What do you want for your children from Hornby High School, what do you value most?

• What would educational success for your children look like, and how would we know that we have achieved that?

• What do you think are the greatest strengths that Hornby High School offers your rangatahi?

• How would you like Hornby High School to develop it’s strengths in the future?

Those are all pretty big questions, and they need a lot of thought. We’ll come back to you all with a more formal way of collecting your ideas (but feel free to send us your thinking at any time).

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

Tumuaki