Dear Parents and Caregivers, We are now coming to the close of our school year and prizegivings are at the forefront of our thinking. I have included an exert from my prizegiving speech at the end of this article. I was really pleased that I managed to get my speech down to only eight minutes this year!

You will all be pleased that we are fully staffed for next year, including in hard to staff areas such as Mathematics, Science and Technology. We have five teachers moving on at the end of the year: Sharnae Ladkin (moving to Wellington), Graeme Ford, Charlotte Saunders (Head of Performing Arts at Cathedral College), Kelsey McBeth (moving to Alexandra) and Carol Carryer (retiring). We have been very fortunate to secure the following teachers for 2019:

· Mr Jeff Brown (Science/Mathematics)

· Dr Rob Lawry (Chemistry/Physics)

· Ms Sara Qasem (French/Classics)

· Mr Hamish Johnston (Information Technology)

· Ms Ruth Dixon (Assistant Head of Faculty English)

We also have starting in 2019 as support staff:

· Krystyna Kavanagh (School Counsellor)

· Dorothy Dixon (Assistant Sport Director)

· Sarah Sweet (Marketing Manager)

I would like to point out that the government has now formally presented its recommendations for the future of self-managing schools. Education hubs will take over the role of both Ministry of Education offices and most of the responsibilities of School Boards of Trustees.  Some of the other more significant recommendations include:

· Dedicated provision for Kaupapa Māori schooling, to boost Māori educational success and achievement

· Limits on schools recruiting out of zone students to reduce ethnic and socio-economic segregation in schooling

· More flexible curriculum assessment and enhanced digital infrastructure and provision in schools

· Every school to have a Learning  Support Co-ordinator

· Recruiting a diversity of teachers to more closely match 21st century schools diversity of students

· The establishment of a dedicated School Leadership Centre to develop leadership ability at all levels of education

· New Education Hubs (replacing Ministry of Education Regional Offices) to help support School Boards, bring resources and services closer to local schools, and help Boards appoint principals

· Principals to be contracted with a school for five years

· The creation of a new independent Education Evaluation Office. This would report on the performance of the Education Hubs, the education system, and the Ministry of Education

· Education Hubs to manage a complaints and advocacy service for students and parents

· The disestablishment of the Education Review Office (ERO) and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA)

· An increase in school equity funding to a minimum of 6% of total school resourcing, because current resourcing is inadequate to meet the needs of many learners.

This is a major shift away from self-managing schools and in the New Year I will send some more thoughts out through our newsletters. The issue, of course, is that there are some great ideas here, and some that seem a little strange. It would be a sad day indeed for a school to lose its own identity, and it appears that this is following an American model that is fraught with issues. More to come!

I want to thank you all for raising such fantastic young people, and I hope you have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

From my speech:

As a society we have become more and more fixated with the end product, the outcome. Did you get an award? Did you make the team? Did you win? Yet it is the outcome that we have no control over, and that might be the reason for our fixation on it. It is the process that we need to focus on, you cannot control the outcome but you can control the process. If you work hard, you give yourself the opportunity to succeed. You may not be successful, but you can look back and say that you gave it your best shot…or that you simply did not work hard enough. Lets be honest, how often do we ask our sons and daughters whether they gave it 100%?, whether they played fairly and with integrity?, what could they have done differently? Or do we say “did you win?” No matter how hard my daughter worked, she was never going to win the prize for Level One Mathematics. I mean that young man was doing stage three at University and was only 9 years old! However did she achieve personal excellence? Did she do the best she could?… for sure.

Now I am not saying that we should not keep score, that we should not, like some primary schools, have a prizegiving… the outcome should become part of the process, it should give us direction for our next steps. It allows us to build resilience when we don’t succeed and excitement when we do. Our prizegivings are about recognising the wonderful achievements of a select few of our students, but I wish to point out that there are many students who may not have been awarded a prize tonight, but have actually attained personal excellence over the year. I want to congratulate those students and recognise their achievements. But for those students who are being awarded a prize, in reality we are recognising their efforts to give themselves the opportunity to be first, to achieve excellence in their subject.

Be proud of your sons and daughters. Be proud of the work they have done, the opportunities they have created for themselves, and the awards they have won. In a world where we are quick to cut down people for both their successes and their failures, when we focus on the outcome, for which we have no control, as opposed to the process, which we do, they need us to be stoically proud of them.

Mā te huruhuru te manu ka rere

It is the feathers that enable the bird to fly

Bruce Kearney, Principal