It was National Teachers Day last Friday. It may not have got the publicity it deserved, perhaps because of the ongoing industrial action. Our teachers are on strike again this week. However, the strike, which is a national one, is for two hours on Wednesday 5 November from 1.15pm to 3.15pm. This was already a […]
On Friday 5 September, I received news from the Ministry of Education that work is going to proceed on the design-build of block 1. This building is the first stage of many in our master plan but I have no idea whether any other stages of the plan will actually be built. When block 1 […]
I watched Erica Stanford being interviewed on Q&A recently. I was interested to hear what she had to say about the NCEA changes that she announced on Monday 4 August. There was a moment where Jack Tame raised a statistic that you may have heard that NZQA published in their 2024 report about that year’s […]
Term two always feels really busy and the end of it is a significant milestone as it is the midpoint of the year. In fact, for our year 12 and year 13 students, that midpoint was a few weeks ago (in terms of their time in class before NCEA exams) and I know that many […]
In November 2019, our school submitted an education brief to the Ministry of Education to inform a future planning process for the school. At the time, we were experiencing some roll growth and estimates of capital works required for the school were approaching $10,000,000 with considerable work needed on the old Alington concrete blocks. An […]
You will receive an email this week indicating your student’s attendance for this term. The government has emphasised that attendance is crucial for achievement and I agree with the strong messaging around this. I have been saying the same for many years as I have looked at data that shows the link between attendance and […]
Kia ora koutou When I arrived at school on Friday 21 February, our contractors for our music room refurbishment had already started to dissemble the scaffolding. The renovation of our music spaces has been going on since late last year but we were able to welcome our students into the new spaces on Tuesday 25 […]
Dominic’s Principal’s Message for the end of Term 4 is his address to our Year 13 students from their Senior Celebration Evening on Monday 2 December. Tēnā koutou katoa Firstly, I watched the final game of our senior A boys volleyball just over a week ago. They asked if I would mention them in a […]
A lot can change in a year, particularly in education. The new coalition government was sworn in on 27 November 2023 and immediately decided to implement a phone ban in high schools across New Zealand. Since then there have been a raft of changes and re-prioritising in the education sphere. The new government has been […]
I am handing my Principal’s message over to one of our staff for this term. Our very own Tessa Prebble has written an op-ed piece on the co-requisite exams which has been published on Emily Writes.
