It certainly has been an exciting and busy start to the new school year, with students now fully engaged in learning and assessments starting to take place.

A big focus for the school is building our sport programmes to ensure we are offering a wide variety of sporting opportunities at various levels.  It is fantastic to see that sports participation is increasing across the school and that we are achieving at the highest level in several codes.  The Senior Girls' Volleyball Team recently won the Tasman Championships for the first time since 2006, followed up by our Boys Team coming third in the South Island Championships and going through as the top co-ed school.  We also have  pre-season training underway in a variety of sports with excellent turnouts at trainings.

Nayland College is proud to be able to field our own Under 14 rugby team again in 2018 and we encourage all interested boys to sign up as soon as possible.  We will continue our partnership with Stoke Club to enable Stoke Nayland teams at other levels and of course our players have the opportunity to join the elite Waimea Combined Team at the highest level of schoolboy rugby.  It also looks likely we will be able to field more than one girls' rugby team this year.  Girls' rugby is certainly a growing sport and one we are keen to encourage our students to participate in.

It was my pleasure recently to spend two days away with our Year 13s at their leadership camp.  I can assure you that this is an extremely talented group of young people and I look forward to monitoring their progress throughout the year.  

Finally, two groups have recently launched fundraising initiatives for exciting activities planned later in the year.  The music learning area is travelling to the Victorian Schools Music Festival in Melbourne in August and the Te Huanui Learning Area is taking a group of students to Hong Kong and China.  I wish them all the best with the challenge of securing the funds for these ventures.

Nga mihi

Daniel Wilson
Principal