Kia ora koutou, and welcome back to Term 4. The year is winding up fast, and this is shaping up to be a busy term for everyone.

This has been a particularly short term for senior students, with only two and a half weeks of classes. Even though most senior students are now on study leave, for many of them there is still a lot of work to be done before the end of the year. Some will be coming in to meet with teachers to complete resits and resubmissions of internal assessments from earlier in the year, and most will also be studying for their external NCEA exams. I urge everyone to work hard during this time, including at home, and push themselves to reach or exceed their potential. I can’t stress enough the importance of studying for external exams! As parents and caregivers I ask you to help ensure your child has a quiet place to study, and they commit a large amount of their time at home to their examination revision.

I would like to congratulate Jessica (13AkM) on gaining her NCEA Level Three certificate endorsed with Excellence, even before the year is over. Well done Jessica! At the time of writing this, there are also four Mōhua students who have their Level One, Two, or Three, certificates endorsed with Merit, and a large number of other students are not far away from gaining either a Merit or Excellence endorsement. Great work to all of you, keep up the amazing mahi!

I would also like to congratulate the Year 12 students who have put their names forward as applicants to become Prefects in 2023, and have gone through their interviews. As is so often the nature of processes like this, there are more quality applicants than there are positions available, so there will be some who would have made excellent prefects but will unfortunately miss out. By the time you read this, the successful applicants will have been announced at prizegiving, so congratulations to those of you that have been selected.

Moving the focus to Year 10’s, it is important to keep in mind that the junior students still have a number of weeks of classes remaining. I will be speaking to the Mōhua Year 10’s shortly about the importance of remaining settled and focused on their learning for these next few weeks. The learning they are doing now will set them up for a positive start to NCEA next year. In some cases, there may be credits they can earn from unit or achievement standards that will give them a head start on the eighty credits they need to achieve Level One NCEA.

If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Ngā mihi nui.

Phil Daines

Years 10 - 13 Mōhua Kāhui Dean

(03) 349 5396 ext. 923

da@hornby.school.nz