Principal's Message

Kia ora and welcome to the Wakatipu High School newsletter at the end of Week 9 - the penultimate week of the term. It has been another good week at WHS, and like Mr Nathan last week, I also want to thank students for how they have been since we have returned from lockdown in this Covid-disrupted term.

It has been a busy week for seniors, with many in-class exams this week as part of our rejigged school exams, as well as internal assessments falling due as they always do at the end of Term 3. Re exams, I do want to give a shout out to our reader-writers who support our students with special assessment conditions. As a school we work hard to support all of our students to reach for their heights, and these folks play an important role in that - thank you very much :)

Speaking of seniors and exams and assessments, Senior Next Steps are on Tuesday afternoon - senior parents please see below if you have not yet booked your appointments, but please note that school will end for all students at 1.50pm on Tuesday and buses will run from this time.

While we are very fortunate to be back at school in Level 2 - unlike schools in Auckland, and most of our students have coped very well, the MoE have produced a really good video for parents by Nathan Wallis and Dr Hinemoa Elder. While it is primarily aimed at life in lockdown, it has some great hot tips on parenting teenagers in general.

We have also had ERO here this week. As I have noted previously, their operating model has changed considerably and is now focused on working with schools to identify a specific area which the school wishes to evaluate. We are going to be looking at the area of junior literacy - an area which we already do good work in, but with the upcoming changes to NCEA and the increased importance of literacy we want to ensure we are being as effective as possible in this area.

Phase 2 - as you may have seen on our Facebook page, there was a big concrete pour for the foundations of the new gym earlier this week and it was great to see that project progressing.

However, lockdown has not been good for Phase 2 and the great progress that they were making on the new wings has been impacted. While they had actually been ahead of schedule we now expect to have the new wings on schedule - ie the NE wing for Term 2 next year and the SE wing for Term 3.

Phase 2 also includes modifications to our existing building, and lockdown is going to have an impact on that too. One area that is being modified is the hard tech and visual arts areas on the south side of our building. When this work is being done we lose access to the whole ground floor of the south side, and unfortunately because that work will be noisy we will not be able to use the floor above it either. That clearly impacts the amount of space we have, so our cunning plan was to do it in Term 4 when the seniors were only at school for two weeks before they depart for exams. Unfortunately with lockdown pushing exams back, that two weeks has become four weeks. This does mean that we will be tight for space until the seniors leave. We will make it work - using the temporary classrooms of course, and the builders are temporarily giving us back part of the learning commons in the NE corner that we have not had access to while they work on the extensions, and with public holidays and prizegivings it is actually only 16.5 days we need to get through until our seniors begin to depart. 

In terms of dealing with disruption through Phase 2 we have done very well thus far, and schools all across the land have to deal with these situations as they extend and rebuild, and we will make this situation work too. As I have said previously - it will be awesome when it is all done, and that is now effectively only three terms away.

LE Reports - are now up on the Portal. These are important indicators of how well your student is engaging with their learning, so please do take the time to go through them and acknowledge the positives and have discussions about the not so positive. Please note that this is the final LE Report for senior students for the year.

Next week is the final week of the term. It is always an important one for seniors with assessments due - please support them to continue to do their best, and all students to finish the term well.

Despite clocks springing forward into daylight saving tomorrow night it is not a very summery weekend of weather ahead, with tomorrow looking particularly wet. Fingers crossed for maybe a few fresh flakes on the fields for some late season pow turns on Sunday :).

Steve Hall
Principal