Term 1 - Week 1
Tēnā koutou,
A very warm welcome to the 2025 school year!
On Monday, we welcomed all our new Year 9 students, new students at other year levels, our new international students, and our new staff with a special powhiri on our marae - Rangatahi. It was a special morning and we were thrilled to see so many whānau supporting their children as well. We have posted a few photos to our facebook page. If you are yet to follow us on facebook, please like our page so we can share important information with you.
We welcome a number of new staff to our teaching and teacher aide group this year. Their names and faculties are listed below:
Rowan Bolley - Music
Alice Adams - English
Stephanie Jones - English and Social Sciences
Asha Abu - Science
Sherin Chacko - Science
Heidi Pink - Vocational Pathways
Banish Kalra - Maths
Debbie Smith - Social Sciences
Clay Drysdale - Music
Ylva Maxwell - Technology
Nancy Ralhan - Maths
Jay Kang - Arts
Loryn Erskine-Shaw - Teacher Aide
Trish Dennis - Teacher Aide
Improving regular attendance at school will again be a focus for us in 2025. The Ministry of Education expects attendance of 90% and above for ‘regular attendance’ for each child in New Zealand schools. Definitions for attendance categories can be found below:
 In term four of 2024 44% of our students were attending regularly. The government has set a goal of 80% of students attending 90% by 2030. Currently, we fall short of this goal. In our Annual Plan for 2025 (available on our website) we have set an attendance goal and it is going to take a collective effort to ensure we can reach the goal.
One of the reasons some of our students are not considered as attending regularly is family holidays taken during term time. An explained absence still counts towards overall attendance. We have noticed a trend of parent condoned holidays taken during the school term. Please consider the effect this has on your child’s learning by taking holidays at this time. In general terms, the Ministry of Education expects families to schedule holidays during the approved school holiday breaks. We have approximately 12 weeks of school holidays available each year to do so. Birthdays are also not considered a valid reason for your child/ren being away from school.
We do appreciate there may be some circumstances beyond the control of families whereby children will need to be away during term time, in this instance simply notifying the teacher/school verbally that your family is going on holiday is not sufficient. Our school procedure is to email the Principal with dates your child/ren will be absent from school and the reason why. Your email will be acknowledged, and the Attendance Register will be coded as a “G” during their absence from school. This code is one of the codes classified by the Ministry of Education as an ‘unjustified absence’. We regularly monitor student absence and report to the Ministry of Education weekly and at the end of each term. Email address for our Principal, Ben Claxton, is: [email protected]
The Ministry of Education has released the following information around increasing school attendance. Click this link for more information.
Along with attendance, we will also have a renewed school-wide focus on reading, writing, and numeracy in 2025. This will be particularly evident in the junior school as we try to equip our students with the rigours of the new NCEA level 1 qualification in Year 11. We have invested a lot of money in two software platforms which we hope will see more of our junior students progressing in reading, writing, and numeracy. Education Perfect will be utilised predominantly for the numeracy aspect and Writer’s Toolbox for the writing aspect. Watch this space for how you will be able to support your child’s reading, writing, and numeracy at home.
The government’s phone ban in schools will be in action again in 2025. Our phone expectations are, phones away for the day including before school, interval, and lunchtime. Unless a teacher has given the students permission to use a phone for a particular special activity we expect that students' phones will be away for the day. Students can either leave their phones in their bags, leave their phones at home, or drop their phones off to the school office in the morning. We appreciate your support in helping us to manage this expectation.
Next week, I will provide an update on the upcoming events in term one.
Have an awesome weekend!
Ngā mihi
Ben Claxton
PRINCIPAL |
