Kia ora whanau,

What a busy term it has already been, with so much still to come. Yet again our community has had to face another challenge with the appearance of COVID in our community. Our staff and students have demonstrated amazing resilience throughout all of the challenges that have been thrown our way.

The news that COVID has entered into our community has added additional complexity to our school. We have had to revisit a number of activities and events to ensure that staff and students are safe and that we comply with all of the guidelines. It is hard to plan and run events when the goalposts keep changing on us all. Where we can, we will try to keep things as normal as possible but there are a number of things that we have had to adapt to meet the challenge of COVID. Thank you for your ongoing support and understanding with this.

NCEA exams start 22nd November and these carry through after school has finished for the year (14th December). These exams are important for all of our senior students and their learning journeys. There has been a lot of hard mahi put in by staff and students alike to prepare for these exams. 2021 has thrown a number of challenges at our students with another COVID lockdown on top of the disrupted start to the year with our flooding. These disruptions have made for a very different year in many ways, but what hasn't changed is the importance of these exams.

We will also be running catch-up opportunities for students that have missed opportunities throughout the year. I encourage all students to take these opportunities to further develop their learning. Our Deans are available to help support and plan the end of the year programs for our senior students. If you need further information on these supported programs please contact the office and they will connect you with the right people.

We had planned on holding our school prizegiving on the last day of school for the year- December 10th. It had already been decided that the event would be a closed event (students & staff only), this is following COVID guidelines. Unfortunately with the latest cases in Taupo we made the call to move the prize giving forward to Friday 19th November. This change was due to the possibility of more cases appearing in our community and the chances of the celebration being cancelled were too significant to ignore. Our school and community has had more than its fair share of adversity over the past 12 months and we want to ensure that our students have their moment to be acknowledged appropriately for all of their amazing achievements at prize giving.

The complexity and restrictions on holding this event make it impossible to hold this event with whanau in attendance. We understand that whanau want to be there to support their child and will be disappointed with this event being closed to the public. We are looking to record this event and will share the link with our community (via the school email system). Whanau can then view the celebrations online.

Prize giving is a wonderful celebration of achievement and success that our Rangatahi have worked hard to achieve this year.

We recently shared with our community the news about our old buildings (Blocks A, B, C & D) have been approved for removal. This process is planned to take place over the holiday break. The area will be grassed until new buildings are built in the future.

We will be working on our planning for the new buildings in 2022. This process will involve consultation with all of our stakeholders. It is an exciting phase of our journey that will result in having the facilities that our students and community deserve.

We have had an eventful 2021 here at Tauhara College. There have been numerous challenges thrown at us from building a new school, changing the timetable, new methods of teaching and learning to the latest challenge of COVID. Throughout it all our staff and students have shown true Tauharatanga- a lot of care, courage and commitment. I would like to thank everyone for their perseverance and aroha that they have shared with one another,

I would like to wish our senior students all the best with their upcoming exams and to the seniors who are leaving our Kura; Whaia te iti kahurangi kit te tuohu koe me he maunga teitei.

Nga mihi nui.