It has certainly been a great start to the school year! Following our wonderful 150th birthday celebration launch, which included the blessing of our pare, we were very excited to receive the news that, not only did we get 19 scholarships in the 2020 NCEA examinations, three of our students gained the top mark in their respective scholarship examinations. Congratulations to all of the students who sat scholarship examinations and well done in particular to those who gained these prestigious awards. May Cavanagh (Media Studies), Sylvia Otley (Sculpture) and Ambryme Geurgoua (French) should all feel particularly proud of being the top scholar across the entire country. The success of the students in scholarship is down to many factors; the confidence the girls have in themselves, the support they receive from their teachers and tutors, and the breadth of learning opportunities they have experienced throughout their lives to date. These outstanding results will hopefully inspire more students to ‘have a go’ this year. 2020 was the second year we offered Scholarship to Year 12 students and with four being successful, it is certainly worthwhile for Year 12’s to enter. On Wednesday our scholarship recipients spoke to all Year 12 and 13 students, sharing their experiences and encouraging them to participate. Some of the common pieces of advice were to choose subjects you love anyway and to think strategically about topics chosen to ensure they could be used across subjects and/or between NCEA and scholarship.

Scholarship results are the icing on the cake for us. What is most important is ensuring students gain the qualifications that will enable them to follow their dreams. 2020 was, as we keep hearing, a very challenging year, particularly for Year 11 students who were confronted with NCEA for the first time and had to gain 80 credits, rather than 60 as required in Level 2 and 3. As a result our Level 1 results were not as good as usual and working with those students to gain both Level 1 and Level 2 this year is a priority for us. Having said that, we are still achieving well above both decile and national averages at Level 1, and our Level 2, Level 3 and University Entrance results were excellent. The following graph shows these comparisons for the 2020 year.

At assembly on Tuesday we will be awarding students who gained Merit and Excellence certificate endorsements with badges and our top scholars, based on their NCEA results with Scholar Blues.

At the end of last year we were alerted, as part of our routine building inspections, that there was some cracking occurring in the Music Suite. Working with School Support Limited property managers, we had an engineering report carried out which showed that while the building is safe to be used, we should investigate carrying out work to stop any further superficial cracking occurring. While this investigation is being carried out and we work through ways to remediate the situation, we have put temporary propping under the building to ensure there is no further damage. We are hopeful that a solution will be found and resolved swiftly. In the meantime we have been advised that the building is fit for its current purpose.

We have a number of events coming up over the next couple of weeks that we welcome you to attend. Monday evening is for the parents of our Year 9 students and is a chance for you to meet their teachers and your child’s friends’ parents. We will also provide help, should you require it, to access Edge (our student management system where you can see attendance and student reports) and our school app. On Tuesday we hold our Whanau Hui for students who identify as Māori and their parents. Wednesday evening is our Parent Teacher and Student Association meeting which features an expert on sleep from the University of Otago who will talk about sleep and adolescents. Next Friday we will be holding our annual Athletics Sports day, weather permitting, down at the Caledonian. You are welcome to come along and support your child.