I hope this email finds you all well and ready to spend some quality time with your children over the quite long term break. We are back on Wednesday 26 April.

It has been one of those fascinating terms. We all thought that we could re-enter normality (with a post-Covid focus) and get back into business as usual (with Covid on the side). What we were not anticipating was the industrial action due to the Government and the Post Primary Teachers' Association not being able to come to an agreement over working conditions, and the continuing effect of the last three years on culture and behaviour.

Fortunately schools have become very effective at navigating the unknown and shifting our focus, based on need.

At the start of the year our school decided to make our focus simple yet strong. We wanted a focus that we could hold onto no matter what was happening inside and outside of education. That focus was “Know me - Guide me”. We, as a school, thought that with all the change in education and at Rangiora High School, we needed a strong connection to hold onto during a time of immense change. What could be more important than treating each student as an individual and then guiding them towards their own personal excellence. To do this, we also made the decision to inform our parents even more regularly on the progress of their children and from this came our fortnightly reports. Both the focus and the informing has been incredibly successful to date and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

At the same time as embedding our focus, we decided to open the doors to our school as much as we possibly could. This meant giving our parents the opportunity to come into school and feel as if they have a say in the direction of the school. The largest part of this was the full review of our teaching and learning programme and delivery. We asked our community how they felt about four aspects of the school: Ako, Wānanga, Semesters and our building, Rakahuri. The response was large and informative and our team has provided some feedback in this newsletter. In addition, the school hosted an NCEA information evening, a celebration of excellence award evening, a connection with coaches evening and of course our connect day with wānanga teachers. I certainly hope that our parents and caregivers feel more connected and informed.

During Term 1, we had classes, field trips, the return of House assemblies, sporting events, cultural activities and some of our big ticket events such as ShowQuest.

School is an enormously busy place with over 1600 teenagers finding their way in life. I am excited by the fact that we can have a return to normality this year and I fully understand that we have some work to do before we have a robust, positive and strong culture of acceptance and excellence. Interesting times ahead!

Ngā mihi nui,

Bruce