At the close of a very successful Term Two there have been many highlights that the school community can feel extremely proud of.

As always, Term Two has been extremely busy for the students, staff and wider community and I certainly know that we all were looking forward to the two week break. Term Three appears to be just as busy with sports, school production, assessments and, to top it all off, we have our Education Review Office visit on September 4th, which happens to coincide with tournament week!

Student Leadership

Our students had a number of opportunities during Term Two to expand their leadership skills. We took a record number of Year 12 emerging leaders to the Christ's College Leadership Day, with twenty-two Year 12s spending the day listening to guest speakers and involved in group discussions. For these students this is the first step towards becoming Head Students and House Captains in 2018 and they certainly look like a fantastic group of potential school leaders.

The following week we had a Maori student leadership conference at Shirley Boys' High School. Fifteen Year 11 and Year 12 students attended this conference and once again listened to keynote speakers and joined group discussion, focusing on culturally responsive leadership. Earlier in the term, Ms Kumar, our Pasifika mentor teacher, took our Pasifika students to a leadership day at the new Haeata campus. This was a new venture for us, as in the past we have not had many Pasifika students. They all represented our school well and placed Kaiapoi High School in a very positive light with our wider secondary school community.

The local YouWeMeUs Kaiapoi community group created a fantastic youth initiative to investigate activities for our young people in our community. This small and hard working group is made up of two Year 8 students from the three Kaiapoi primary schools and four Year 9s from our school. They already have a number of ideas on the table and are working towards making Kaiapoi an even more interesting place for our youth. Jordan Giles, Ashton McKenzie, Amiria Gentry-Tuck and Emma Sewell are representing the school in this group.

Sports

We have a huge number of teams heading out and playing sport each week. These sports include pool, football, hockey, netball and twelve teams in basketball alone. Our Senior girls netball team played in the Supernet reserve competition for the first time. The Supernet competition is the elite competition in Canterbury. They finished the first round undefeated, with most games being won convincingly, with an average winning margin of 18 points. During the last week of term they had the opportunity to move up from reserve. They played a great game  leading the scoreboard for the first half, but sadly were just pipped at the post. It was a fantastic opportunity and considering our team has a core of Year 11 and 12 students, I am sure we will see some more fantastic results next year!

The Arts

The Arts have been very busy this term. I had the pleasure of attending the senior music performances last week. I am constantly amazed at the incredible talent that we have in our school. These performances were simply outstanding, and I believe the Year 11 show was also quite amazing. I even managed to convince Nick Wright and Logan McDonald to perform for the staff during our final professional development morning. What a great way to start a day listening to Santana’s Black Magic Woman, followed by ten minutes of Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd.

Of course the School once again performed to a very high standard in Stage Challenge and then most of the students jumped straight into rehearsals for our school production of Oliver. Originally we had thought about performing The Little Shop of Horrors, however due to having so many students who wished to be part of the production, we shifted to the larger show of Oliver. We are all looking forward to the show early next term. Our Art department has a number of students displaying their art in the Kaiapoi Art Expo and there appears to be an ever multiplying group of wearable art models in the entranceway to the school!

Manu Korero

At the recent Maori speech competition held at Christchurch Boys' High School we had four students enter: Destiny Robson (Year 12, English), Cydnee Bowen (Year 11, Te Reo), Waiora Brooks (Year 10, Te Reo) and Mana Joyce-Grace (Year 10, English). We had an amazing day and will be heading to the North Island representing our region as Waiora Brooks achieved first place in the junior section. In fact we had three placings overall! They were:

Junior Te Reo: Waiora – FIRST place

Junior English – Mana – THIRD Junior English

Senior Te Reo – Cydnee – THIRD place 

Well done to all the students and staff who either spoke or supported our speakers.

School Formal

On Saturday 1st July we held the Kaiapoi High School formal at Club Sixty-6 underneath the Christchurch Casino. This superb event was really well organised by the formal committee with the assistance of Mr Kwon and Ms Smith. It was a great night and the staff of Sixty-6 were extremely complimentary of our students. The formal committee came to me the week before, asking if we could reduce the number of staff attending as we had over 30 and we were taking up too much space! It really highlights how involved our staff are, as many schools struggle to get staff along to these events.

Our new gym

Construction is moving along quickly with the new buildings and our target of being ready for the start of 2018 appears to be very achievable. Our staff and students are coping very well with a new build and business as usual in the school. Currently we have the highest growth rate of any state school in Canterbury over the last five years, with a 23.15 % increase. The average was 4%. We are currently over capacity by 3% and this was achieved by serving our community with an in-zone percentage of 97%.

Sarah Saunders, our School Marketing Manager, has been working connecting our community with our school and had and outstanding result by connecting with the Waimakariri Council and securing a 1 million dollars contribution to our new school gymnasium. We are currently working with the architects to design a gym that supports both school and community use. This really supports our core value of community. Well done Sarah!

Other highlights

Mitch O’Hara in Year 12 ranked in the top 10 Irish dancers in the world at the recent world championships in Ireland. He is looking at heading over to Ireland to establish a career in dancing.

Rhearn Le Huray in Year 9 won the title of New Zealand Dancer of the Year at the New Zealand Dance Awards in Christchurch. She aspires to become a dance teacher.

Alex McCracken in Year 13 was selected to represent New Zealand at the 11th Asian Science Camp in Malaysia. She was selected by the Royal Society Te Aparangi and will travel in August.

He ao Te Rangi ka uhia, ma te huruhuru te manu ka rere ai.

As clouds bedeck the heavens, so do feathers enable birds to fly.

Bruce Kearney - Principal