Throughout February and March we celebrated all our academic successes of 2023.

We held:

• Our annual Scholarship assembly celebrating those who passed NZQA Scholarship exams

• Academic Blues assemblies for those who achieved Excellence Certificate Endorsements (50+ Excellence credits) at NCEA Levels 1 and 2 or a Cambridge IGSCE A* Award
• An Excellence Subject Endorsement assembly for those who gained one or more Excellence subject endorsements
• Our inaugural Academic Caps assembly for those who attained the trifecta of Excellence Certificate Endorsements at NCEA Levels 1, 2 and 3.

Cambridge IGCSE Results:

• Eleven A* grades achieved by nine different students, two of which were Year 9 students
• Six A* in Combined Science, two in Global Perspectives, two in Mathematics, one in English.

Excellence Subject Endorsements:

Eighty-five students in total across NCEA Levels 1 and 2 gained at least one Excellence Subject Endorsement. For most subjects, the criteria for an Excellence Subject Endorsement is 14 or more credits at Excellence, with at least one external standard contributing to those credits.

NCEA Level 1

• Bronze Award (1): 26 students
• Silver Award (2): 14 students
• Gold Award (3+): 12 students

NCEA Level 2

• Bronze Award (1): 18 students
• Silver Award (2): 6 students
• Gold Award (3+): 9 students

Academic Blues - Excellence Certificate Endorsement:

An Excellence Certificate Endorsement requires a student to achieve 50 Excellence credits across their Academic Programme. In 2023 we had the following results:

• 11, Year 13 students received an Excellence Endorsement (9% of the cohort), with a further 26 receiving a Merit Endorsement (21 % of the cohort)
• 29, Year 12 students received an Excellence Endorsement (24% of the cohort), with a further 43 receiving a Merit Endorsement (35% of the cohort)
• 31, Year 11 students received an Excellence Endorsement (19% of the cohort), with a further 47 receiving a Merit Endorsement (30% of the cohort).

NZQA Scholarship Results:

• 31 NZQA Scholarships, one of them Outstanding
• Top performing school in the Otago/Southland region
• Second best performing boy's school in the South Island
• Fourth overall in the South Island of all Secondary schools.

Academic Caps:

Academic Caps have been introduced this year to recognise those students who achieve an Excellence Certificate Endorsement at NCEA Levels 1, 2 and 3.

In 2023, ten students achieved this accolade:

• Josh Buchanan – 154 Excellence credits in total – 57 at Level 1, 47 at Level 2 and 50 at Level 3
• Lewis Cameron – 162 Excellence credits in total – 55 at Level 1, 48 at Level 2 and 59 at Level 3
• Blake Carter – 195 Excellence credits in total – 83 at Level 1, 46 at Level 2, and 66 at Level 3
• Harry Collie – 175 Excellence credits in total – 62 at Level 1, 53 at level 2, 60 at Level 3
• Lintong Jiang – 161 Excellence credits in total – 59 at Level 1, 48 at Level 2, and 54 at Level 3
• Alex MacDonald – 203 Excellence credits in total – 56 at Level 1, 87 at Level 2, and 60 at Level 3
• Massimo Pezzuto – 289 Excellence credits in total – 70 at Level 1, 124 at Level 2, and 95 at Level 3
• Dylan Pledger – 207 excellence credits in total – 80 at Level 1, 65 at Level 2, and 62 at Level 3
• Liam Thorne – 223 Excellence credits in total – 77 at Level 1, 69 at Level 2, and 77 at Level 3
• John Warman – 211 Excellence credits in total – 76 at Level 1, 78 at Level 2 and 57 at Level 3.

Academic excellence is at the centre of everything we do at King’s and it is our mission to continue raising the bar and exceed everyone’s expectations.