March 2019 Newsletter

Principal's Comment

Kia ora Koutou.

Welcome to a new year and a particular welcome to our new students and whanau. It has been wonderful to be able to meet many of you at a variety of events already including our Powhiri, the Year 9 parents' evening and the Filipino parents' evening. 

We also welcomed a number of new staff to the Riccarton family at the beginning of the year. They are referred to elsewhere in our newsletter. I am sure that their time with us will be both professionally satisfying and rewarding.

As we head into week 6 of the term, it is pleasing to see that a majority of our students have well-and-truly settled into a routine and that they are embracing our Riccarton Way values both inside and outside the classroom. 

This was particularly evident at our recent Gala day; a colorful and fun-filled day where our students showed a positive spirit and committed themselves to the events on offer in rather warm conditions! Many thanks to our staff for their hard work and to the parents who turned up to support on the day.

Our provisional results from NCEA in 2018 give cause for celebration, particularly when we add the fact that we had six scholarship winners. When looking at the results overall, a change in the way that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority reports these needs to be interpreted carefully. Their reporting is now based on ALL Year 11-13 students who are enrolled with us throughout the year for at least 70 days whether they sat NCEA or not.

Riccarton High School has significant numbers of students who do not enter a full 60 or 80 credit course, for example, our English Language Learners, those who are on job search or have gained apprenticeships and those in our Kohanga Ako programme. In addition, a level 3 student who has entered for a full level 2 course is now recorded as not achieving level 3. 

In this context therefore when reading the pass rates below it is important that a distinction is made between the total roll based figure and those who actually participated in a full 60 or 80 credit programme:

Level 1:      71.7% NZQA - all students      84.1% - RHS - participation

Level 2:      69.6% NZQA - all students      92.3% - RHS - participation

Level 3:      64.9% NZQA - all students      82.3% - RHS - participation

The key thing to note is that our success rate with those students who participate in a full NCEA course remains very high. 

It is also important to note that as a school Riccarton High School celebrates ‘success’ in many different ways besides academic performance. This is the essence of our graduate profile - this is who we are!

Looking forward to catching up with you soon.

Neil Haywood
Principal