As we sail towards the end of an extremely challenging term, I continue to be astonished at the leadership quality within our student body. There are many examples of this, but I will choose two to share here.

On Monday, I met with Madix and Eva (our Board student reps) and our uniform suppliers to begin planning important additions to our uniform, including scarfs, hats, caps and beanies. We also discussed some potential changes to the uniform for 2023. Madix and Eva represent our school community with the sincerity and grace seen in experienced business leaders, and you all would be proud of their current contribution.

This week student leaders are involved in a wide range of events. A group have organized Mana Wahine and ‘Just Dance’. Mana Wahine supports the strengthening dialogue for our women to unleash their various ‘superpowers’ and Just Dance is a series of lunchtime activities to socialise and exercise in a non competitive way. Many thanks also to the community leaders who supported this kaupapa. Student leadership is building momentum and is so important at this time of our lives.

To me, the heart and soul of the school community relies on student leadership. The more responsibility and authority they take to make authentic contributions the stronger Mana College will become.

Thank you all for participating in learning conferences this week. As you know, learning conferences are an important part of our communication with parents and whānau. At this conference you would have heard about the learning model for Term 2 (see below).

We have designed this model for Term 2 on the basis of a reduction in Covid 19 cases with staff. In week 10, we only have 8 staff isolating (compared to 24 staff in week 7) and we anticipate this reducing further.

Therefore, with staff back at school, our focus can return to having students attending school each day to build the routines and disciplines for learning. In this Term 2 model we plan that after lunch we will have a focus on health and wellbeing, and the needs of individual learners. Some will want to crack on with their studies; others will need some hauora support; others will want to use arts, culture, kapa haka, or sport to flourish and we want to provide this.

We will provide more information on the PL or Personalized Learning timetable next week but we are looking forward to this model with excitement.

Covid Update:

This message from the Ministry of Education is to let you know that we have updated our COVID-19 policies and practices to reflect where New Zealand has moved to in our Omicron response, which has been guided by science and public health advice.

As notified by the Ministry of Education (Bulletin, 29 March), the key changes to the COVID-19 Protection Framework impacting schools are:

• Removal of My Vaccine Pass from the framework effective from 11.59 pm Monday 4 April

• and from Friday 25 March:

  • removal of any outdoor capacity limits at all colours of the framework

  • increased capacity limits when indoors at Red, moving from 100 to 200 (but still allowing for one-metre spacing) and no capacity limits indoors at Orange and Green

  • no requirement to display QR codes at any setting (but be ready to use them again in the future)

  • no need to have alternate check-in systems for COVID-19 beyond your usual visitor register processes

  • no mask requirements when outdoors (but masks remain a requirement indoors for staff and students when at Red)

  • additionally, masks are strongly encouraged to be worn at Orange.