Kia ora tātou (hello to all of us)

I write this as rain falls, early on Friday morning, so today’s Endeavour Sports Day hangs in the balance. Whether it goes ahead or not, I want to thank the amazing organisational leadership of Pip Deans and support of Sam Forward, as well as the House Leaders and everyone else who gets behind this event. We’re fortunate to have such energy creating positive experiences for our school.

As you know, Sam Forward leaves us at the end of term to move to Hillmorton High School as DP. We have appointed Mr Jared Peacock, currently Assistant Principal at Taieri College, and we expect him to start late Term 2 or start of Term 3. We were fortunate to have a very good field of applicants and we believe we have a good ‘fit’ in Jared. We've faced a lot of change in our senior team but we’re confident we can serve our school’s needs well.

Our Japanese visitors left us this week and we had a very pleasant evening with their homestay families. Our students have learned so much about Japanese culture and about manaakitanga / hospitality. We really depend on our homestay families and we’re blessed with such amazing people who really make our guests feel welcome and safe.

Our Education Review Office (ERO) interim report is available now on their website. Please see separate article in this Dispatch. It's nothing exciting!

We had seven lovely students at school on the PPTA strike day who made a great day of it! Thanks to all the support of our parents in accommodating this, and to the staff who helped on the day. Whilst the tool of a strike is disruptive to students, which is the last thing I want for our schools right now, it does bring attention to issues in the education system: with changes in society adding higher needs - such as a stretched range of learning levels and behaviours, and rightly greater demands to meet individual students’ needs - if we want a system that works we need it to be better resourced such as a higher ratio of teachers and teacher aides. That doesn’t mean pay, necessarily, but in my view new teachers do need a significant pay boost if we are to continue to attract people into the job. I also believe there are other things that need to be done to improve our system such as a much greater expectation of ongoing professional learning when schools are closed for instruction and greater accountability on all of us school staff.

Ngā manaakitanga (good wishes/care)

Andy England

Key dates:

See https://darfield.school.nz/calendar/

Friday 17 March: Endeavour Sports (whole school)

Monday 24 April: staff only day (school closed for instruction for staff learning)

Tuesday 25 April: ANZAC day

L-R: Carrie Whyte, Nic Turner, Sam Forward, Andy England