Congratulations to the nineteen young men in Years 11-13 and their tutors who succeeded in the 2023 NZQA Scholarship exams.

Congratulations to all our parents as well for your part in making this achievement happen for your son. You may have given direct academic support on the subjects he took. Or provided vital moral support, encouragement, sustenance, and study space that went a long way to make this success. Whatever form your help took, this achievement was due to the support crew at home as much as the efforts at school.

Scholarship is the toughest test in New Zealand Secondary Education. It’s achievement that carries special significance and status, with quality that is rarely found in our education system. It has quality that’s recognised across New Zealand for its rigour and valued for its elite challenge.

NZQA Scholarship is more like university excellence than typical school excellence. It’s where the best academics find satisfaction and their place in advanced learning and higher order thinking and expression. To pass these exams also puts them in the company of our best teenage academics nationally.

To be awarded one Scholarship is a marvellous achievement. To achieve a number of Scholarships, as some of our young men have done, represents remarkable work against demanding standards.

We are tremendously proud of the King’s Scholars who reached this academic bar so admirably in 2023.

This whole-school pride extends further however. It would be too narrow to see it as only the achievement of hard-working students and tutors directly or immediately involved in 2023—as impressive as this was. The results show us so much more.

Scholarships were awarded in fourteen subjects. This reflects the broad strength and skill of our teachers and their teaching, and the importance we give to personal excellence. If the school was not driven strongly by its personal excellence ethos, from the start of Year 9, it would not get to these heights in the Senior School.

If the foundation we give the boys leading up to Scholarship was insufficient, ill-conceived, or poorly directed, we would not have these fantastic final outcomes.

In its own way, Scholarship shows the very good academic health of the entire school in general. This goes beyond Scholarship-specific preparations and results. It shows a school that’s committed to lifting all its boys academically, with each teacher doing their best along the way, as boys move through. The Scholarship successes reflect the prime value we place on teaching and learning that is aspirational and that lifts learners.

Congratulations again to our 2023 scholars and tutors for what you have achieved in Scholarship, but also to all of you out there, who have acted in your own way to advance high quality education at King’s for all of us.

Finally, I urge all students who have strength and talent, in one or more subjects, to commit to NZQA Scholarship; to strive to take your place on the King’s Wall of Honour, to be celebrated for years to come. Put yourself in the company of New Zealand’s finest students.