Dear Parents and Caregivers, It is fantastic to be in Level 1 of our nation’s Covid-19 response. It was a strange few weeks working in Level 2, with the school essentially functioning as normal as possible, with a few exceptions, such as a fairly heavy use of hand sanitiser!

I think that it would be fair to say that our staff and students haven't seen a great deal of difference being in Level 1. While we were in Level 2, we were trying to focus as much as possible on how we could offer all the opportunities to our students that we could manage, this included returning to sports practices, field trips and assemblies. My concern was that our Year 13 students would see almost all of the special events that we hold disappear and that they would be impacted more than any other group of students. Fortunately, we have an amazing group of head students and they began planning in the hope that we would see a shift into Level 1 before the end of the term. Due to their focus and planning, we are now confirming a number of key events that are booked and ready to go:

· Senior Formal: This has been booked and the plan was to manage the numbers based on the alert level that we were in. They prepared for four different scenarios ranging from a full Year12/13 and partners to a small gathering of just Year 13 students. Now that we are in Level 1 we can progress with offering tickets to all Years 12 and 13 students and their partners. Time to start looking for those dresses and suits online!

· Leavers' Dinner: This has now been booked and will once again be held at the Kaiapoi Club. It is a fantastic event where we farewell our senior students over a dinner, speeches and entertainment.

· Leavers' Assembly will once again run as a whole school event. Although this is for staff and students only, it is essentially our farewell to our seniors, it would have been soul-destroying to have to cancel it due to limited numbers.

There will be an update soon as to the exact dates for all these events.

Our School’s Head of Faculties made the decision to use the extended time that NZQA has given us to have the students in class and preparing for examinations. We choose to keep the students in school, as opposed to giving them an extended examination leave, so that we could offer support and guidance leading up to examinations. This time also allows some of our internally assessed subjects to have a little more time finishing off assessments. We have also decided not to have an examination week this year for our Years 12 and 13 students. These students will still sit practice examinations; however, they will be held during their double periods in class time. It will be interesting to see how this goes as my personal belief is that our students in the past have not really used this time off particularly well, and hopefully, with more guidance, we will see some positive outcomes in terms of their results. These are important for our students as they make the foundation for any derived grades if an incident or illness occurs that stops the student from attending their final examinations. The Year 11 students will have practice examinations as usual, as they give these students the experience of completing papers under examination conditions.

NZQA has now released its support package for students entering NCEA. It is somewhat unusual as, rather than simply reducing the required credits, they have created additional credits of learning. My advice to the senior students in assembly the other day was that they should continue to work towards their original goal and use these credits as a backstop, rather than relying on them to pass.

Although NZQA has said that for every five credits you gain you get an extra one credit, to a maximum of 10 in Level One and eight in Levels Two and Three, the reality is they have reduced the credits needed.

· Level One reduced from 80 to 70 credits (as you can use up to 10 learning recognition credits)

· Level Two reduced 60 to 52 (as you can use up to eight learning recognition credits)

· Level Three reduced from 60 to 52 (as you can use up to eight learning recognition credits)

This will be helpful for those students who may struggle to gain the required credits, however, for the large percentage of our school, they tend to get well in excess of the required credits anyway.

What will potentially have an impact on is the reduction in credits required for Merit and Excellence endorsements.

· Certificate endorsements normally require 50 credits. This has now been reduced down to 46.

· Subject endorsements normally require 14 credits. This has been reduced down to 12.

There has been no better time for our students to aim for endorsements in both certificate and subjects.

For University entrance you now require:

· Literacy and Numeracy as normal

· Level Three as normal

· The three UE subjects now require only 12 credits instead of 14 for each.

Most of our teachers feel very confident that we will be able to manage moving forward. We have caught up time by not having an examination practice week, fewer interruptions from sports, and the additional two weeks at the end of the year. So, I will say once again that there is a real opportunity for your sons and daughters to strive for and gain Merit and Excellence this year. Please try to encourage them.

Finally, all the Canterbury secondary schools agreed to not running an open day this year. The decision was made before we went into lockdown and was agreed to by the principals of the schools. Whilst we could have had one in Level 1, we have all chosen not to. We have created a virtual tour of the school and this will be released soon. The closing date for enrolments is 31 July. We have limited our out of zone enrolments for 2021 to 15 students. We will receive more than this, and will allocate places based on the enrolment process all schools use:

1. First priority must be given to any applicant who is accepted for enrolment in a special programme run by the school (like most schools, we do not have one).

2. Second priority must be given to any applicant who is the sibling of a current student of the school.

3. Third priority must be given to any student who is the sibling of a former student of the school.

4. Fourth priority must be given to any applicant who is a child of a former student of the school.

5. Fifth priority must be given to any applicant who is either a child of an employee of the board of the school or a child of a member of the board of the school.

6. Sixth priority must be given to all other applicants.

Mā te aroha ka tutuki

Bruce Kearney, Principal