Tēnā koutou katoa

Welcome back to Term 4. I trust your children enjoyed a well deserved break after an incredibly busy Term 3 where we celebrated such significant student success and achievement.

We now have seven days until we farewell our seniors. Before we do that we have the opportunity to celebrate their success and accomplishments for the year. There are a number of important dates and highlights to look forward to. Please note them on your calendar.

• Sports Awards Friday October 26, 6.00 p.m. in the Hall. This will be a Formal Occasion

• Year 12 and 13 MARK Awards, Wednesday October 31, 8.50 a.m., then released home

• Year 11 MARK Awards Wednesday October 31, 9.50 am, then released home

• Senior Prizegiving Rehearsal 11.20 a.m. in the Action Centre, then released home

• Year 13 Graduation Practice, 12.20 p.m.  Action Centre, then released home

• Senior Academic Prizegiving,  Thursday November 1, 7.00 p.m.

• Year 13 fun day and BBQ, Friday November 2

• NCEA Exams begin Wednesday November 7

• Year 10 Camp, November 6 - 9

• Graduation Dinner, Tuesday December 4

• Year 9 and 10 Prizegiving, Tuesday December 11, 9.00 a.m.

• Year 7 & 8 Prizegiving, Tuesday December 11,  1.30 p.m.

• Community Presentation by Mark Osborne on the Future of Education, Wednesday 12 December, 5.30 p.m.

Student Engagement and Success

Firstly, congratulations to all our students who have experienced success over the last few weeks.

• Ryan Crapp from Katikati College attended the NZCTA Secondary School Champs. Ryan won the SI Single Rise HOA and NZ Single Rise HOA and also won the SI Aggregate (including Skeet) High Gun. He placed 2nd Boy in the NZ Skeet event and was 1st in both the SI and NZ Single Rise Kilwell Trophy matches. He missed out on the NZ Aggregate (including Skeet) High Gun after a shoot-off and was only 1 point off the SI HOA shoot-off. This was a great effort in his last secondary school shoot. Well done Ryan.

• Our students performed well at the Secondary Surfing Scholastic in Gisborne over the holidays. The team included Tanner Hayes, Cameron Hankins, Thomas Carter and Ayrton Yarrell. Congratulations to Thomas Carter who placed 4th in this competition, a great result.

• Our Debators continue to demonstrate their excellent ability to persuade people with our Senior Team (all Year 12 students) being awarded the Intermediate Shield. Our Year 10 Team was awarded the Junior Premier Cup and our Year 9 Team placed 3rd Overall in the NZ Schools, BOP Development Champions Competition. Well done!

• Louie Campbell’s achievements have been acknowledged by the NZ House of Representatives. They passed a motion to congratulate Louie for receiving the 2018 Smoke Free Rockquest ‘Best Vocals’ award. This is a great accomplishment Louie, nice work!

• Our engineering department have been producing some incredible electronic projects, which have resulted in a range of electric vehicles. Brecon Cameron went to the NZ National Secondary School Mini Grand Prix and was awarded the 2018 National Title ‘Most Innovative 70c Motard.’ As well a group of our Year 12 Engineering students entered E-Volocity and for the second year in a row won "Most Economical Kart".

Our staff also have been leading the way, and achieving some amazing successes. A big congratulations to staff receiving TeachNZ Study Awards for 2019:

• Mrs Louise Buckley will be on Study Leave for Terms 1, 2 and 3 in 2019 to work on her Master of Education. She will be returning to Katikati College in Term 4.

• Mrs Lindsay Fish has been awarded a full year's study leave in 2019 to work on her PhD, returning to our College in 2020.

• Ms Taryn Johnson has been awarded 32 weeks study leave to study Coding.

• Mrs Wendy Fleming has been awarded a Sabbatical for Term 1, 2019.

Congratulations to Matua Joe Manukau who received the Queen's Service Medal at Government House in Wellington on September 26. This award has been for Matua’s services to the NZ Fire Service and our community. This has included 33 years of service to the Fire Brigade (16 years as Fire Chief and 6 years as Deputy Fire Chief), his contributions to rugby coaching and refereeing, RSA Vice President and 40 years of teaching. Well done Matua, we are very proud of you. This honour is well deserved!

Staffing updates

With Vanessa Moodie leaving and Lou Buckley on Study Leave in 2019 we have had the opportunity to appoint some new Deputy Principals to our Senior leadership Team. Congratulations to Simon Finnimore who has been appointed as a permanent Deputy Principal and Deirdre Duggan who has been appointed to the role of Fixed term Deputy Principal. Both Simon and Deirdre are currently members of Katikati College staff and we are excited to have them as Deputy Principals from the start of Term 4, 2018.

We have appointed Libby Bevan, to the other permanent Deputy Principal position and look forward to her joining us in 2019. Libby is currently a Learning Design Leader (HOF) of Social Science at Hobsonville Point Secondary School in West Auckland. She has completed a Master of Education in Global Studies through the University of Waikato, where she focused on Māori priority learners. She is leading the professional development at her school around culturally sustaining practice as a Kāhui Ako School Leader.

We have created new Head of House positions in 2019 to support House Captains and nurture a higher level of House spirit within the school. Head of House staff will provide Academic Mentoring for senior students in their house, track achievement and attendance and work collaboratively with the Deans and Senior Leaders to ensure all our students are in the right place at the right time, ready to learn. We will also be creating a system to award house points to students for achievement, engagement and attendance.  Heads of Houses for 2019 are:

Gledstanes - Chloe McDonald-Nairn

Mulgan - Simon Quin

Stewart - Vetekina Pekipaki

 MacMillan - Sarah Quilty

Making Learning Queries

With the change to our Senior Leadership Team please note the people you should go to if you have a query about your child’s learning

We strongly encourage our whānau, parents and caregivers to work in partnership with our school to support the learning of our students. Your child’s learning, achievement and success is important to us, we have high expectations for them and believe they can achieve personal excellence.

Learning queries are welcome at anytime; you can phone or email to make an appointment or query about your child. See over the page for important email contacts. Please see the table at the bottom of this article for details of who to contact for the remainder of 2018.

PPTA Paid Union Meeting

The PPTA have notified the school of a paid union meeting on Tuesday, November 20. School will close at 12.20.The buses will leave at the normal time and the College will supervise any students unable to be picked up. Closer to this time we will ask parents/ whānau to confirm which students will need to be supervised.

New Enrolment-Based Measure of NCEA Attainment

Schools have been asked to share this message with their learning community.

NZQA and the Ministry of Education have implemented a change to the way NCEA and University Entrance attainment is reported. The new enrolment-based measure of NCEA attainment will replace NZQA’s roll based and participation-based measures. It provides a more precise picture of attainment. It counts all domestic students in years 11 to 13 aged less than 19 on 1 January, rather than taking a snapshot of students as at 1 July. It also counts up to three ethnicities students identify with, rather than limiting this to just one. As a result, NZQA advises that most schools will see a change in their attainment rates. It is a statistical adjustment that doesn’t reflect school performance, teaching practice or an individual student’s results. Also, whilst NCEA and University Entrance attainment rates do change for most schools, the amount of improvement in student attainment over time is similar and positive using the enrolment-based measure. NZQA has consulted with schools on the way attainment is reported at a school level. The enrolment-based measure will be used for reporting NCEA and University Entrance attainment statistics from January 2019. More information can be found here.

Community Suggestion Box

Thank you to all those people who have shared their opinions and ideas with us so we can improve our College and better support our student learning. Some of the suggestions we have received since the last newsletter include;

A request to make more staff available for duty at the gates in the morning. In response to this we will have members of our Senior Leadership out more in the mornings.

We have also received a request for clarity with communication about dates like Teacher Only days and we will try to communicate these more clearly using the newsletter, Facebook and the sign at the front of school.

For feedback about Future Pathway Interviews that happened on September, 24 and the new timetable and courses that will be offered in 2019, please  refer to the Student Question and Answers about the 2019 Curriculum & Timetable Improvements for more information.

Ideas about uniform and changes people would like to see. I would like to that confirm uniform will stay the same for 2019, with the addition of a beanie and cap.

A reminder that there is a ‘Community Suggestion Box’ available on our Website for our school community to have their say and communicate their ideas and feedback to the College. These comments will be addressed each month through the Principal’s Comment of each Newsletter.

Best wishes to our seniors for your NCEA exams. We believe in you and know you will do your best to ‘Make your MARK!

Ngā mihi nui

Carolyn Pentecost | Principal

Katikati College Vision: An innovative learning community to maximise people potential

2018 Theme is Manaakitanga