Dear Parents and Caregivers, It really is quite amazing how quickly the years go by when working in a school setting.

My daughter is currently picking subjects for her Year 13 course next year, and it seems like only yesterday that I dropped her off to school in Year 9. Now I am faced with being asked for petrol money for her car, and whether she can go to a party on Saturday night. Fortunately, she has moved through the teenage brain phase, as told by Nathan Wallis, just in time for my son to begin in Year 9! All of our teenagers go through this phase and we are all experiencing similar behaviours at home, including the loss of spoken language and the loss of short term memory, especially when it comes to taking out the rubbish! As teachers, we are very fortunate that almost all our students are focused in class and at school, and leave the switching off to when they get home. They really are remarkable that they can achieve such fantastic results at school during a time when their brain is shutting down and rewiring.

We seem to be going through quite a series of change in the education sector at the moment. The Government has implemented its changes to NCEA and we are now planning for managing this change. It is not easy, as it appears that the changes have been made, but the implementation of many of these changes has not been fully thought out. Hopefully, over the next year, the business end of these changes will be clarified and we can move forward with purpose. I have to say I am not fully comfortable with some of the changes, but I am optimistic that our staff can make sure that we provide the best possible opportunities for our students. The 2021 Year 9 cohort will be the first year of the new system.

We are also waiting for the final decision on the replacement of ‘Tomorrow's Schools’ and the self-governing nature of our school systems. I believe in the current system as it allows schools to create their own character or flavour of school without the need for a huge amount of red tape, but I also understand that it has created a system where there are distinct winners and losers. One of my core educational beliefs is that young people should attend the school that represents their community. Naturally, there are times when there is a greater belief at hand and your local state school does not provide a faith-based environment or a single-sex environment, but for most of our students and families, their local co-educational state schools provides multiple opportunities for their children to succeed. The Canterbury region of Secondary Principals have taken a strong step towards reducing the competitive nature of schooling, which seems to intensify as the high school years approach, and are working together to limit the amount of out of zone students spreading across the city. By working together we can minimise the impact of a competitive model while retaining the positive aspects of self-managing schools. Sadly this does not seem to be the case across New Zealand. Recently I have a fairly robust discussion with a Principal from Auckland who was sharing with a group of soon to be graduates of teaching that his school has students ‘flooding in from out of zone’. He saw this as a positive for his school, whilst I saw this as undermining the education sector and thus creating the need for the government to ‘fix’ tomorrow's schools. In a sense, he had created the need for a response, to which he was opposed, to a situation he had helped create.

During winter tournament week the School had a large number of students all through the country from Nelson down to Cromwell. I managed to spend two days in Nelson watching the senior girls’ basketball and netball. We also had teams in the senior boys' basketball (Christchurch), girls' hockey (Cromwell), rock climbing (Christchurch) and junior boys' and girls' basketball in Ashburton. Our teams represented our school really well and the feedback was that they all had a most enjoyable time. We are now preparing for the shorter summer sports season and we are all looking forward to warmer weather and getting outside to play some sport.

Enrolments are well underway for the 2019 Year 9 cohort. We currently have 220 students enrolled and we are expecting this to grow as we go through our individual student interviews at each of our contributing schools. It is already our largest Year 9 cohort in the School's history and we are excited to welcome this group into our school at the start of next year.

Finally, our new gymnasium has been completed. This is the last major building project for the school and we have had our official opening. The outgoing Mayor, David Ayers, spoke, alongside the Ministry of Education, Brosnan and the School. It was blessed, followed by speeches and Kapa Haka and then a Staff vs Year 13 students volleyball game. We do intend to have an open day for the gymnasium, much like we did for the new teaching blocks. This is going to be an amazing resource for not only the school but for the entire community. I reflect back to after the earthquakes where there was much discussion around creating buildings that are multipurpose, allowing use both during the day and at night. I am really happy that we have managed to do this alongside the Waimakariri District Council. We are one of a few examples of this taking shape.

Mā te huruhuru ka rere te manu

Adorn the bird with feathers so that it can fly

Bruce Kearney - Principal