Last week we welcomed our new students and staff and welcomed back returning staff and students. Despite some disruptions due to fire, weather and public holidays we have had a great start to the school year.

The focus for us as a school this year is Engagement and Well-being.  It is through this focus that we seek to ensure girls feel they belong, see the relevance in what they are learning and as a result achieve to their potential.  As part of our Engagement and Well-being strategy we have moved to a new pastoral structure that sees all girls in House based Whanau Groups. The Whanau Teacher is the primary contact person for your daughter and is the person you should communicate with first if you have any queries or concerns regarding your daughter or her progress. Earlier this week you were emailed a document containing contact details for your daughter.

Communication with our families is very important to us and we are working hard to find effective and efficient ways of keeping you informed about what is going on in the school. We are moving to a weekly newsletter this year in the hope of keeping the Nautilus News down to a more digestible length and to record events in a more timely manner. We have also developed a school app which we hope you will download. This can be used to send absence information, receive important alerts (such as school closure due to snow) or access sporting, cultural, careers and/or achievement information.

Since getting underway last week we have held a mihi whakatau for our new staff and students, held house meetings, elected House leaders, launched PB4L for the year and held our Prefects assembly (which we live streamed for the first time). We have also managed to get classes under way and I have been very impressed by the focus and engagement of students in their learning as I have moved around the school in recent days.

We work in a very busy school where our teachers and support staff work tirelessly to offer opportunities for our students that are second to none. Our focus at this stage of the year is ensuring our girls develop a sense of belonging to the school. One way of achieving this is for them to be involved in activities and we would appreciate your encouragement of your daughter in doing this.

I look forward to meeting many of you at various events in the coming weeks. These include the Year 9 meet the teachers evening, Athletic Sports, Pasifika fono evening, whanau get together and International get together. I trust that together we can support your daughters to be the confident, resilient, independent and responsible young women we want them to be.