Dear Parents and Caregivers, It is amazing how quickly a school term can get away on you!

We are now into the month of July, and at the end of term two. For our year nines this means that they are halfway through their first year at secondary school. For our senior students, they should be concerning themselves with making sure they are getting some “points on the board” in terms of NCEA credits. For parents and caregivers, a good conversation to have with your children over the holiday break, would be about how they are progressing with this, and to encourage them to work towards gaining merits and excellence as they accrue their credits. Information regarding this can be found on the school portal, and on the NZQA website. Year 10 students are now heading into their last quarter as juniors and will be looking at making some decisions next term around their subject choices for 2023. Our Course Selection Evening is on Tuesday, August 16. We will be holding parent teacher interviews in the second week back next term, which will give you the opportunity to discuss progress with your children and their teachers.

Due to being unable to hold school assemblies in term one, we are celebrating the successes of our students’ 2020 NCEA results by holding our Academic Assembly on the last day of this term. We will acknowledge those who have demonstrated our school value of excellence. While talking about excellence, we have been treated to two evenings of musical performances as our senior students perform for their NCEA assessments. Our sporting teams continue to perform on the local level, with some great results. A number of our art students are having their work displayed at the Kaiapoi Art Expo on 16 & 17 July at the Kaiapoi Club, more information on this is attached.

I have included the strengths and next steps from our recent ERO report.

Strengths

The School can draw from the following strengths to support the School in its goal to enhance student and staff wellbeing:

• the School has well-established processes for internal evaluation and continuous improvement.

• teachers are actively engaged in the collection and analysis of data, to identify students in need of acceleration and address equity and excellence.

• teachers effectively use research, different teaching approaches and regular evaluation to identify what initiatives have the greatest impact for students whose progress needs to be accelerated.

Where to next?

Moving forward, the School will prioritise:

• strengthening and implementing the schoolwide use of SOLO (Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes) to inform teaching and assessment practice.

• monitoring the impact of the implementation of SOLO taxonomy on excellence and equity in achievement of all students. (SOLO taxonomy provides a measure of cognitive learning outcomes or understanding of thinking).

• continuing to encourage and support Māori children to succeed as Māori.

ERO’s role will be to support the School in its evaluation for improvement cycle, to improve outcomes for all learners. ERO will support the School in reporting their progress to the community. 

The next public report on ERO’s website will be a Te Ara Huarau | School Evaluation Report and is due within three years.

In the second week of term two we successfully completed our Emergency Plan Training, and we were congratulated on how well we executed this. Unbelievably, we had reason to go into a real lockdown the following week, due to angry dogs on the grounds as we were about to break for lunch.

It has been a privilege to be the Acting Principal for Kaiapoi High School this term. My goal was to keep a steady hand on the waka and maintain a business as usual approach before we welcome our new principal, Jason Reid, next term. I have been supported by an incredibly hard working staff and tremendously supportive senior leadership team. I have enjoyed my term, and I am sincerely grateful to the staff of Kaiapoi High School for the support they have given me.

Geraldine Enersen, Acting Principal