I would like to congratulate all of the students who received their ARC Awards in Week 4. It was a real pleasure to sign each of the certificates and read through the achievements of our students.  

As I mentioned to several groups of these students, this is a reflection of the hard work that they are putting in and displaying the key aspects of ARC – Aspiration, Responsibility and Citizenship. It is also a reflection of the amount of care and nurturing that our staff has towards our students. It is a way for us to observe these behaviours in our class settings and correlate them to the achievement within the classroom. I know  that sometimes the students may appear a bit flippant about these awards but they carry a lot of meaning and you should be very proud, as parents and caregivers, of your students' achievements. There is always an opportunity to set new goals and this is something that we are very happy to assist with.

I would also like to thank all those parents who have been part of the Vocational Pathway Conferencing that we have started for the first time this year. There was a real desire from our staff to provide more guidance and support in the selection of subjects for our Year 10 students as they progressed to Year 11. From what I have heard, both from teachers and parents, this has been a very valuable exercise and something that will hopefully help students as they move towards NCEA next year. This concept is something that we will evaluate and then possibly progress further throughout the school next year.

Congratulations too, to all the people who have been involved in the Education Perfect Year 9 & 10 Science Competition. This online competition is an International Event. Katikati College has been involved for a number of years and the students really enjoy being involved. We have some outstanding results and if you look in the Science and Special Achievements section of this newsletter you will see full details on how well our students have done.

I would like to recognise and congratulate Micaela Fleming for her achievement in the Western Bay of Plenty Community Volunteer Awards this year. Micaela received the Youth Spirit Award for her ongoing involvement with the Waihi Beach Coastguard. Micaela has devoted a huge number of hours to volunteering for this wonderful organisation as well as all her other responsibilities not only at College but also her involvement in Sea Cadets. The Community Awards evening held at Comvita was a wonderful occasion for the Katikati Community. It was also great to see that Mrs Wendy Fleming, our Head of Arts, was able to receive on behalf of the Katikati Concert Band, acknowledgement of their contribution to the Arts in the Western Bay of Plenty. It was a very proud evening for all the people of Katikati. 

I would like also congratulate the Concert, Jazz and Steel Pan Bands for their involvement and success at the recent Waikato Music Festival. This is a wonderful event which brings together outstanding Bands and Groups from throughout the Waikato and Bay of Plenty. To win medals at this competition is a wonderful acknowledgement of the talent and ability that we have here at Katikati College. Congratulations once again to Mrs Fleming for all her work and efforts with these groups.

We have a large number of sports teams involved in Semi-finals and Finals in their respective grades in the WBOP Competitions. There has been some outstanding success this year in a number of our sporting areas and this has been the result of the hard work and support from the students, teachers and parents. I look forward to hearing final results so we can communicate these with the wider community. As I have always said, we are a relatively small school who do outstandingly well against much larger schools.

Finally I would like to wish Libby Bradley all the best as she heads to The Netherlands to compete in the World Junior Surf Lifesaving Championships. This will be an amazing competition for her to be involved in and it is great that one of our students is involved in such a high level International Competition.

Nāku noa

Mr N Harray | Principal