NCEA examinations are going well and Year 9 and 10 classes are finishing up their programmes of learning and undertaking a range of learning opportunities both inside and outside the classroom.

Junior examinations went well with students taking this opportunity to consolidate their year’s learning and experience the examination environment. Students have been getting their exam results back and staff are busy writing junior reports.

This week has been Junior Sports Week where students from schools across Otago have been participating in a range of sporting activities including Volleyball, Ki o Rahi, 3-aside Basketball, Waterpolo and Dodgeball. Organised by Sport Otago, the junior sports week provides opportunities for students to take part in sports they maybe don’t normally have a chance to experience. Year 10 campers are preparing for their trips with some practice walks and first aid training, with some Self Defence thrown in for good measure.

While these activities are going on, work is progressing on planning and preparation for next year. Staffing, timetabling and budgeting are all tasks carried out at this time of year and today members of the Board of Trustees, Senior Leadership Team and Heads of Department are taking part in a strategic planning workshop to set the direction for the school over the next three years. We are also in full planning mode for the 150th celebrations coming up in 2021 and for future building projects involving the Dalrymple and Siedeberg Blocks, as well as planning for the opening of our Classroom by the Sea early in 2020. Over the summer break we will be undertaking a Cloud Migration process which will move the vast majority of our computing functions into the cloud, thus removing the need for servers on site. We have been working towards this for a number of years with our use of the Google suite for our Learning Management System, Edge for our Student Management System and Xero for our accounting functions having been phased in already. We are going to a combined Office 365 and Google suite solution which will allow staff and students to have access to a wide range of platforms and software.