On the 5th of August, Mr Haywood, Sammy Glentworth and I, attended an afternoon tea with our local Canterbury Members of Parliament and Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern.

Originally, the purpose of the afternoon tea was for students to meet our local Canterbury Members of Parliament. However, our Prime Minister heard about the initiative and was so enthusiastic to be part of the event that she asked us to delay this to a date she would be able to attend.

Prime Minister Ardern visited Te Aratai College earlier in the day and in her address to the students she highlighted that the current crop of NZ Year 13 students have done all of their NCEA years under pandemic conditions . She felt it was extremely important to acknowledge how challenging this has been for our young people and that this was a factor in her decision to attend the afternoon tea.

Burnside High School hosted the event with 35 secondary schools in attendance.  It was a good opportunity for us to communicate with students from other schools and share how COVID-19 has impacted on our school, challenges that we had to face and what we did to overcome them.

Students were given the opportunity to ask Prime Minister Ardern any questions they wished. There were a series of casual and formal questions. We believe everyone got their questions answered and received some great advice from her. The day concluded with free time for individual conversations and photo opportunities between different schools and the Prime Minister as well as our Members of Parliaments.

Sammy and I represented Riccarton High School with pride and are grateful that we had this opportunity, it was an amazing experience and very inspirational.