Dear parents and caregivers

As we end the first term of the year I wanted to share some brief comments about our progress to date.

Our strategic plan 2024 - 2025

You would have received a draft copy of our plan earlier this year seeking feedback. I am pleased to provide a finalised copy that our Board has endorsed. You will notice some live link relating to evidence collated that helped shape the detail within the plan. The school is committed to 5 high level long term goals for the college and include:

1. Creating a values-based culture of well-being & care

2. Connecting with our community

3. Delivering high quality teaching and learning

4. Building effective leadership capacity and capability

5. Being a respected employer of choice

Our aim is to provide our community with regular updates with regard to the progress of each of these overarching goals

Vision and values refresh

Our shared vision for the future will see us all ‘embrace opportunities; creating excellence’ in everything we do. Underpinned by our new values of CARE - courage, aspiration, resilience and empowerment we endeavour to ‘teach’ these values at every opportunity throughout our community. We encourage our students to practice these values in their daily lives, in and outside of the school. We are using all of our assemblies to unpack and provide examples of these values. Many students are already showing encouraging signs of positive behavioral changes as a consequence.

To support our new vision and values - the school has partnered with external educational providers to deliver a new school-wide behavior management initiative called ‘PB4L’ - positive behavior for learning. We anticipate that this programme will help build a positive culture of learning and behavior at Pāpāmoa College.

NCEA student success | confirmed results

As mentioned previously, we were delighted with our NCEA provisional results from last year. The results are certainly impressive, especially as we exceeded national averages but also compare very well against other local secondary schools. Our NCEA achievement targets were mostly met but we still have some large gaps yet to be resolved. I attached a copy of our 2023 target outcomes but also provide our community with our 2024 NCEA achievement targets.

International students

This year we welcome our first ever International Students to Pāpāmoa College. It has been an exciting beginning with students from Germany, India, South Korea and Japan at our kura. They have been experiencing not only our school and our culture, but our wonderful location in the beautiful Bay of Plenty region. We want to also acknowledge our fantastic homestay families that have and continue to host our Internationals giving them the true ‘kiwi kid’ experience. We have more students joining us this year, so if you are interested in becoming a host family we would love to hear from you directly or you can complete the homestay application form.

Deputy Principal

Our special congratulations to Ms Claire Mulcahy who has been recently appointed to our vacant Deputy Principal position following the resignation of Ms Jane Townsend. Claire was previously our HOLA science and had a proven track record of leadership excellence.

Government priorities - ‘back to basics’

NCEA changes

The government has announced an extension to the L2 and L3 NCEA reforms. This means that there will no change to the current format of assessment to these two assessments until 2028 and 2029. The new NCEA L1 assessment format will continue as currently planned. This is positive news that will allow staff and students to fully adjust to any future changes.

Reading, Writing and Maths

The government’s focus on foundation skills from Y1-8 is a priority. As a school we have always prioritised literacy and numeracy by ensuring that all teachers in our junior school deliver specialised programmes of learning that integrate reading, writing and maths.

Full Cellphone Ban

The government has legislated that all schools ban the student use of mobile phones during the school day. We have previously banned phones from just classes but will now adopt the Ministry of Education recommended approach of “Away for the Day” from the start of the new term.

This means that mobile phones either are not brought to school or are switched off and kept in their bags at all times. This is a gate to gate approach - from entering the school grounds in the morning, to exiting the school grounds at the end of the day. Students must not access their phones at anytime during the school day which now includes interval and lunchtimes.

Attendance

We would like to again stress the importance of attending school regularly. Our staff will carefully monitor attendance and will make contact with parents/caregivers where there is on-going unexplained absenteeism and lateness. We track attendance patterns across all levels of the school and have made it a priority this year to ensure ‘every day matters’. International research is strikingly evident that success is intricately linked to turning up to class regularly. Recently, at one of our assemblies we celebrated a number of students who have so far this year attained 100% attendance. My congratulations to all of these students.

Uniform and grooming - winter months

Thank you for your support with our expected uniform and grooming regulations. With the winter months upon us, please remember our new uniform item of the offical school hoodie. This is available from the uniform shop.

Summer and winter sports

We are excited to embark on our winter sports programmes following the success of many of our summer sports. Many team have used the last part of summer to prepare themselves and the school has been a hive of pre-season trials, fitness activities and sports exchanges including our annual Rototuna High School recent sporting fixture. Each year we receive participation data gathered by Sport NZ and it was pleasing to see that engagement rates for Pāpāmoa had increased. Please see the link which is positive for Sport at Pāpāmoa.

Property development completion - update on pause

There is a property update for you in this edition of the Connect.  

You may have heard about the Ministry's decision to pause on the final 2 buildings, the new gym and whare.  We eagerly await their decision late April.

On behalf of the school I wish all of our school community a restful and safe break away from school and hope you have an enjoyable holiday.  

Mr Iva Ropati
Principal