Student achievements, an attendance challenge and reminder about Monday's staff only day.

Kia ora koutou katoa

Brenna Rudman in Year 7 recently entered a speech into a national competition for the New Zealand Principals’ Federation Conference, about her hopes and dreams for education. I had the privilege of recording her kōrero and I’m delighted to say that she won her category. The main prize is to get to address the conference - several hundred school principals at Te Pai Christchurch Conference Centre - with what Brenna wants from principals for her education. This is a major achievement for Brenna and I look forward to reporting on her conference address.

If you're a parent of a DHS student, you should have received voting paper for our Board election. It's great that we have a good selection, so please have your say.

We recently tried a different approach to calculating student attendance, in line with a Ministry of Education initiative. We found that only 44% of our students have attended school at a rate of 90% + this year. 90% is one day off per fortnight. We’re not blaming parents/caregivers at all, as this year has been harder than the last two Covid years, but this statistic gives a good idea of how hard it has been to teach our classes. While most of our teachers are going above and beyond to accommodate the range of student needs related to absences, we do need to build towards more consistent attendance at school by avoiding casual absences and holidays during term time.

Please remember we have a Staff Only Day on Monday 22 August, as do all secondary schools in our region. This is to prepare for the changes to NCEA which take place over the next few years; we'll also be redeveloping curriculum for Years 7 & 8.

I hope you enjoy the new format for our newsletter. 

Noho ora mai,

Andy England