Kia ora koutou anō,

As we head towards the end of a phenomenally busy term it seems appropriate to reflect on some significant events that have happened this term.

Charley Wahanui's accident and subsequent passing has deeply affected his whānau, his friends, our staff and the community. I was proud of the way in which many people within our school community supported Tania and Craig and each other and showed genuine care as we all worked through this trying time. As you will see in this newsletter we have organised a memorial assembly on Monday 23rd to allow those that were unable to attend his Tangi to be part of the grieving process.

As way of honouring and forever remembering Charley we have worked with the whānau and created a new trophy for the house haka and waiata competition. This is a unique carving and will be in his name. We look forward to presenting this to the winners on Monday.

As many Year 11 parents will know, the changes to Level 1 NCEA have not been easy for our Year 11 students to deal with this year. We have strongly advocated for changes to be made to the Minister of Education and various Ministry of Education officials. It appears that some changes will be and look forward to a common sense approach.

However, one thing that will not change is the importance of students gaining their Literacy and Numeracy. I have mentioned this in previous newsletters and cannot reiterate enough how important it is for students to improve their Literacy and Numeracy skills. One of the best ways to start, is to encourage your children to read. It almost doesn't matter what, a magazine, a comic, the newspaper, a book - the more they can see the grammatical structure, correct punctuation, spelling and a variety of writing styles the better.

We are looking at changing things for next year, to support students across all areas of the curriculum especially developing a consistent approach to Literacy across the whole school. Any encouragement from home will be of great benefit.

You will also see in this newsletter a plan to further upgrade the school campus. As our roll continues to grow, we want to provide the best possible facilities for our students, staff and community.

Massive congratulations to our two teams the competed in the Winter Sports Tournament week. The UNISS Netball team managed to achieve their goal of staying in the highly competitive C Division of the UNISS tournament. UNISS is a really cool event, featuring the best netballers across the upper North Island attend and some great netball is on offer. Many thanks to Amy and Chayne for coaching and Amy Paetai who was the manager for the week. Many thanks to the parents that ventured up to Waitakere to support the team as well.

Our Senior A Boys' Basketball team have achieved something really significant and qualified for the nationals to be held in Palmerston North during the October school holidays. These amazing students did so well. The way that they managed to focus during an emotional week was really impressive. The other teams they played against showed them massive respect and were amazed at how young some of the team were. Again, my thanks to Task, Pukes and Mwangi for providing such a great environment and culture to allows these athletes to flourish. We look forward to hearing about your results in the next few weeks.

In this issue

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