Kia ora tātou

As we look forward to a unique long weekend it gives us an opportunity to reflect on the service of Queen Elizabeth II. Her life was not perfect and not everyone agrees with the monarchy, but she served unselfishly for 70 years, and we will celebrate her service with a holiday on Monday.

I want to acknowledge everyone who was involved in Winter Tournament Week. It was great to see teams and individuals travelling all over the country. I want to congratulate the Intermediate Basketball team on winning their tournament and thank all the staff and volunteer coaches for making the week a success.

Last week we celebrated Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori. This was not as active as we have had in the past due to seniors being on study leave but it was great to celebrate one of the languages of Aotearoa. I want to thank the boys for putting together the videos that were posted each day on Facebook.

We held our senior examinations last week and overall these went well. For the Year 11 students it was the first opportunity to go through a formal examination situation and I hope they learn from that experience. One of the things I noticed is that there were a number of boys turning up late and unprepared to start their examination on time. All boys need to organise themselves for examinations and turn up at least 30 minutes before the start of the exam. This gives them time to settle, find where they are sitting and mentally prepare themselves for the exam. For the boys who did not do that last week, they need to think about our value of Better than Before and make sure they do for the NCEA examinations in November.

Next week the reports will come out for boys in Years 11 – 13. These will give results from internal assessments to date and the results from the school examinations or other practice assessment they have done. I urge you to look at these and look at how well your son is doing. A reminder that he requires 80 credits to achieve. If he has a lot of credits remaining, then he needs to start thinking about how he will gain them and start preparing for the NCEA examinations.

Have a nice long weekend and I wish everyone well for the holidays which begin at the end of next week.

Ngā mihi

Tim Grocott