Senior Prelim Exams and Tutorials will be held from Friday 12th to Friday 19th of August – from the end of Week 3, Term 3.

Senior students will have either an assessment, often in the form of a written examination, or a two-hour tutorial for each of their full-year subjects. The final timetable will be published at the beginning of term 3 and the senior students will only be required to be at school when they have exams and tutorials.

Students need to be aware that there are three two-hour sessions held on each day (except Wednesday when we only hold two sessions to allow our school sports teams to continue to participate in the Wednesday afternoon competition). The first session of each day begins at 8:30am and the third session does not end until 4:00pm. We appreciate that some senior students will have after school commitments which they will need to rearrange.

Prelim Exams are very important for senior students and we use them for a variety of purposes. These include:

• Signalling what learning needs to take place before the external exams in November.
  
• Potentially providing us with evidence that could be used to generate an NCEA derived grade if a student cannot sit a particular external exam at the end of the year.
  
• Guiding entry into next year’s subjects including helping us determine which Year 11 students may be able to manage studying six full-year subjects next year in Year 12.
  
• Potentially completing internal assessments for NCEA standards.
  
• Identifying which students will benefit from staying at school throughout November for extra tuition.
  
• Providing an opportunity for students to practice working under exam conditions.
  

Teachers will provide students with feedback on their assessments and help them identify “next steps” for learning. Our final written senior reports for the year will be emailed on the last day of term 3. Senior students should already be preparing their revision programme for these assessments – this could be a good project for the July term break!

Year 9 and 10 students continue on their usual timetable during Prelims.