I attended a Principal’s conference in Queenstown earlier this week. There were strong themes of decolonising and re-indigenising our curriculum with Professor Mere Berryman’s keynote presenting a powerful examination and, at times horrific history, of education in New Zealand. In approaching this, Professor Berryman quoted Moana Jackson who said that “… to understand how to […]
Kia ora koutou This has been a challenging term. I know I have said this before and every time I write that down or say it, something else comes along and we have to make alternate plans to meet the new challenge. I want to thank all of the students for the way that they […]
At this time of year we are normally looking backwards, at our work last year, and looking forwards, making plans for the rest of the year based on the data we have collected from last year. Mark Twain famously said: “there are lies, damned lies and statistics” and I’m conscious of this whenever I collect […]
This year has brought challenges. I have detailed these in previous messages. I expect there are more in store in relation to COVID next year when we are living with it in our community. It is hard to know what that will look like but it will affect attendance at school for teachers and students […]
At this time of year we would normally have a range of celebrations as our seniors and, in particular, our departing year 13 class move into exam mode. These events haven’t been possible, in their normal form, because the Ministry of Education sent advice to schools at the end of September which was a shift […]
In his end of term Principal’s message, Dominic pays tribute to friend and colleague, Mike Neville.
It is the end of term 2 and I feel there are a lot of tired students and tired teachers around so the break is much needed. Term 2 is a time when our students participate in an astonishingly wide range of activities. If you are a regular reader of our weekly wrap-ups you will […]
I attended a Principals’ conference in Blenheim this week with an interesting list of speakers and themes. Given the events of the last 15 months, the two strongest themes were wellbeing and, not surprisingly, leadership. John Peachey addressed both of these aspects in his keynote comparing the Everest climbs of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine […]
I met with a group of Wellington Principals yesterday and a representative from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA). The meeting was about the service that NZQA provides for schools. You may or may not know that an NCEA review has been underway for some time with the intention of rolling out new standards and […]
A year ago in this message I was talking about our roll growth and the future plans that were in place to address a growing school. Since then, the Ministry has put in place four classrooms on the edge of our field to ease some of the congestion and these have been welcomed by the […]
