Panui from Rachel Skelton

Wow what a term we have had so far! The learners have returned with renewed vigor towards their learning and extra-curricular activities that is very pleasing to see.

There are a number of exciting opportunities coming up for parents and learners to engage with the school. We have our learning conversations for both Yr 12 and Yr 9-11 coming up during this term. As is usual practice these conferences will run over a day and a night and learners are only required to attend school during the day for their interview. These conversations will allow an opportunity to check on progress but also to look towards the future in terms of course selections etc. We hope to be able to also run the endorsements evening that had to be postponed due to Covid 19.

Our Kahui Ako is hosting an Anxiety Evening during week 4,12th August, hosted at the college and I encourage parents to come along from 7-9pm. It promises to be an informative evening.

It was with great pride that I viewed the recent photos of the combined kapa haka group that is forming between Lincoln, Ellesmere and Rolleston College. Not only will this help to strengthen kapa haka within our own school but it also allows for connections to form across our local schools to share best practice and beyond kapa haka to develop further cultural competency and support of our young people. I am also very proud of all of those learners who have devoted time to their co-curricular and extra curricular passions - be those Sporting, Arts or Community based endeavours. The NZ Physics and Mathematics Competition was held recently and due to COVID-19 took place on the Education Perfect Platform. We are proud to congratulate Isaiah Sands who was 9th in the Year 9 competition. It was extremely dense in terms of content and quantity of questions with many that he would have been unfamiliar with. He did extremely well to receive this distinction.

As a school we promote a culture of telling and you may have seen TELL as a poster on the wall of our learning spaces. The teaching that goes with this relates to making sure learners feel comfortable and confident to share their successes with us. It also acknowledges the need for learners to TELL about things that they see that they think are not right and do not belong at Rolleston College. We work hard as a school to develop significant adults for each child in the school so that each learner feel they have someone to go to to celebrate or to report something they think is not right. The same, of course, goes for our parents. We love it when you inform the school of things that you think we should be celebrating more actively. We also welcome suggestions and feedback on any issues that your feel need to be addressed.

You will have hopefully received the information related to the consultation for schooling provision for Rolleston which includes zoning information for the primary schools and provision for the second secondary school. There are certainly some decisions to be made around what the implication would be for our town of having two seperate zoned secondary schools vs a cohesive secondary pathway and it is important for our families to have a voice within this decision. The following link should take you to the consultation document https://www.dandgconsulting.co.nz/rolleston which is open until the 24th August

Looking forward to connecting with as many parents as possible during this eventful term!

Rachel