Tēnā koutou katoa. It is hard to believe we are in the last week of the year for 2020.

It has been a very different year this year in many ways and one that has certainly tested our resilience and adaptability. It is great to know that a nice long summer break is almost in sight.

It was fantastic to welcome our 2021 learners on Monday. A big thank you to Kelly Tippett for all of her hard work in organising the day.

Next year will see a few changes as we welcome a large cohort of new learners and a number of new staff. We are making some timetable changes to allow for more consistent blocks of time for each learning block and some adjustments to allow more focus on Literacy and Numeracy skills and for more frequent contact lessons in a week. This will see us retaining longer blocks but making these 75mins consistently rather than the 100, 90, 80 arrangement that we have currently with different days having different block lengths.

This will mean that each day will have 4 blocks per day rather than 3 and each day apart from Wednesday will finish at 3pm. A change in time to accommodate our early finish for sport means that on Wednesday classes will begin at 8.30am rather than 8.50am. We have made contact with the bus company so that they are aware of this earlier start on Wednesday to allow for our earlier finish.

2021 is also when Secondary Teachers complete further training for the NCEA changes being implemented in the next few years. There will be three NCEA Accord days during 2020 where all Secondary Schools in Canterbury will be doing this work. There important training days are in addition to teacher only days in 2021. Our school has also been selected by the Ministry of Education as a trial school for the new Science standards at Yr 11 which is very exciting for us as a school.

Good luck to our touch team as they head off to Nationals and a big thank you to the Keno family and Ms Almeida for their support of this group and for taking care of them in Rotorua

Finally thank you to all of our families, learners, staff and community for a great year. We look forward to welcoming you back in 2021

Mere Kirihimete

Rachel Skelton

Principal