Dear Parents/Caregivers

Kia Ora Tatou

The school holidays are finally upon us and I expect that students are looking forward to a well earned break. For senior students, they will have finished their practice NCEA exams which were finished on Friday afternoon. Teachers have started marking and will be providing students with their grades and feedback as soon as possible. Like other assessments, the student’s work is required to be moderated. The results may be used if their performance in the end of year NCEA assessments is impaired as a result of illness, injury or other acceptable reasons.

I do encourage all students, whilst having a break during the next two weeks to make sure that their studies are up to date. This means catching up on missed work or for senior students, doing a little more preparation for the end of year assessments which commence on 7 November. A little time now will pay benefit to student results in January!

NCEA Changes
As you will be aware there are changes to NCEA coming in and teachers during the last two years have been preparing for these changes which will take full effect at NCEA Level 1 in 2024. Many of the NCEA trials finish in 2022 and as we have further information we will be making this available. For students who are effected by the changes will be working with them very early on so that they are fully aware of the changes. The same information will also be shared with our parent community.

The changes aim to:

Make NCEA more accessible for all students
Provide equal status of matauranga Maori and acknowledge Maori knowledge and world view
Strengthen literacy and numeracy for students
There will be fewer but larger standards worth more credits.

Teacher Only Days
To support the ongoing professional development of NCEA there are to be two teacher only days in the fourth term. All secondary schools are required to hold these two days and we have set the dates of 21 and 28 November. Whilst we appreciate that two teacher only days will present some challenges for some families with child care and supervision we have tried to choose dates which will cause the least disruption in what is already a very term and a disrupted year.

Finally
I hope the next two weeks do provide a time for families to re-connect and have some time together after a very busy term. Hopefully the weather plays it’s part and there is the opportunity to get outside and enjoy this wonderful part of the country. To all the students, have a good break and I look forward to seeing you all for the start of the final term of the year.

Ka kite ano

Senior Practice Exams

Well done to all our senior students who have completed their NCEA practice examinations this week. It has been great to see such a high attendance for these.

Boys Cricket

Yesterday, a "trial" was held to select the 1st XI team that will contest the McCullum Cup T20 tournament over the Saturday and Sunday of Labour Weekend (22-23 October). Unfortunately, only 9/16 interested players turned up, meaning that all of those players have been selected, but we are still two…