Kia Ora All,

I hope that you all had a good December and January and that you were able to spend some time with friends and family. 

 We have had a very busy holiday time here at Massey. We are close to completion of the new Art and Drama building and the new front of our school hall should also be finished within the next month.

Our provisional NCEA results were excellent, particularly Level 2 and Level 3. Thank you to all of our students and staff who are in working to complete standards at our Summer School. I am incredibly grateful to all staff, parents and particularly our students for their hard work. I will report back to you at the end of February with our final validated results.

We have our Boys' and Girls' Football teams in Germany as I write this. This has been a huge undertaking and will be the trip of a lifetime.

Thanks also to our community for driving up our attendance and punctuality to outstanding levels. We will continue to drive forward on this. High levels of achievement and attainment are linked to high attendance and punctuality. This will also mean that we will be directly contributing to higher levels of employment and prosperity for our students in their later lives.

I have been very privileged to listen to the thoughts of senior students around political issues and the level of discussion and debate is very encouraging. I’ve been humbled by their insights and reflections. 2017 sees the World in a different place than January 2016. We have a new Prime Minister, a new Deputy Prime Minister and a cabinet reshuffle. The 2017 New Zealand general election will be held to elect the 52nd New Zealand Parliament. The last possible date for the election would be 18 November 2017. We have seen the huge attention that is focussed on the political landscapes in the UK and the US. The essential thing is to vote. It is something that I will reinforce with our students here at Massey, a number of who will be old enough to vote and why voting is important.

2017 will be another big year for Massey High School but also an incredibly big year for the rest of the World, on lots of fronts. Our job in preparing our young people for what lies ahead is always exciting and priviliged work as we all do our best to ensure that our students have the opportunities and tools to seek the heights.

All the very best for 2017.