This week I would like to share with you my speech from Open Night, which highlights some of the many strengths of our school. Please also find our School Profile in this newsletter, which has been revised this year. At this time it is useful to focus on the many amazing things that go on here - especially in this, our 150th year.

Nau Mai, Haere Mai - Tena koutou katoa

Welcome to Otago Girls’ High School. My name is Bridget Davidson and it is my great privilege to be Acting Principal at this school. Linda Miller, our Principal, is currently seconded to the Teachers Council undertaking a project around Principal Leadership and will be back with us in Term Four, before completing 10 years of service at the end of 2021.

In 2022 there will be a new Principal of Otago Girls’ High School. This is a very exciting time for our new Year 9 students in 2022 as they will be entering the school at the same time as the new Principal. It is very special to follow a new Principal through the first five years of their tenure. Our School Board is currently in the process of this appointment and be assured that this will be a thorough and well-considered decision.

This year is our 150th year since Otago Girls’ High School opened in 1871- the first State Secondary Girls’ School in the Southern Hemisphere. It is therefore fitting that the first Olympic Gold Medal won by a woman in New Zealand was Yvette Williams, ex-pupil of this school, at the Helsinki Games in 1952, jumping an impressive 6.24 metres in long jump. So it is too that Olympic Gold Medals won this week by women included the Black Fern Rugby Sevens Team, including our own ex-pupil, Kelly Brazier. This is a truly remarkable school - a school of firsts, a school of achievement, a school of excellence.

In 2020 we gained the top performing marks in Scholarship for girls in Otago, including all girls’ schools and all co-ed schools. We were top in Otago for the number of Outstanding Scholarships gained, as well as having three Top Scholars in New Zealand - an achievement only equalled nationally by the much bigger schools of Burnside High School, Rangitoto College and Westlake Boys’ High School. We will be retaining Level 1 NCEA for the foreseeable future as we believe in building skills and capability in sitting exams and see success in assessment going hand in hand with wellbeing. Our usual Level 1 results sit at 92% with the remaining students achieving Level 1 soon into the following year. Our University Entrance pass rate is 88%.

We are a Positive Behaviour 4 Learning school and use restorative practices to guide our pastoral systems. Everything flows from our school values: Whakaute - Respect, Hihiri - Positivity and Pono - Integrity. We have thirteen deans and three school counsellors who look after and nurture our students to thrive.

This evening you will get a taste of our many school activities. Here everyone is involved and everyone belongs. We are inclusive and increasingly diverse. We give service generously to the community and have fabulous work-based programmes and links with Otago Polytechnic and the University of Otago. Once here you will be asked to meet with us twice a year for thirty minute conferences to discuss student progress and plans in our Year 10 to 13 mentoring programme.

I will finish with a quote from one of our Year 9 parents this year:

I had expected high school to be less able to respond to individual needs or interests. For it to be less personal. However, every teacher and staff member we've spoken to has been very welcoming and helpful, and appears to value our daughter as an individual. It's been a really pleasant surprise. Well done to all.

Be very welcome at our school. Nau mai Haere Mai. Tena koutou tena koutou tena kotou katoa.