9 December 2022
He maonga āwhā
Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou katoa
The whakatauki that I used at the Junior Prize giving translates as, “the calm after the storm”. I chose this whakatauki as the last three years have been extremely hard to manage with COVID-19 and its subsequent effects such as lockdowns, rostering home, Zoom lessons, and the cancellation of many events. The hope for 2023 is certainly some sort of normality will return to schools as our borders reopen, and our ability to hold events such as the school production increases. While I do not think COVID-19 will completely disappear, I do hope that our ability to provide an exciting education for our students is not impacted on too greatly.
The school year has now finished. During this term we have held several ceremonies to recognise the successes of our students. The most recent, held early this week was the Junior Prize Giving. Our successful recipients were:
Top Year 10 Academic Achievers Joint: Sia Goel and Holly Robins
Top Year 9 Academic Achiever: Xiaoyu Huang
Year 9 Runner-Up: Kathleen Wang
At the end of last week, we once again held our Two Day Discovery when the students had the opportunity to try different things. The students were offered a wide range of exciting activities, everything from learning to surf, making films around the city to learning to knit and soap making. The students readily engaged with these activities and some new skills were learned.
At our recent prize-giving we farewelled the following staff. Their reasons for leaving are wide and varied and include leaving to live in Australia or other parts of New Zealand or retiring. I would like to thank the following for their contribution to the College:
Ms Dorricott (resigned), Ms Aaltonen (retired), Mr Mulholland (moving to Christchurch), Mr Reddy (moving to Hamilton), Ms Beck and Ms Illangasinghe (moving to Australia), Ms Shearson (travelling overseas), Ms Pooley (undertaking study), Ms Schuster and Ms Sanderson (changing schools), Ms MacIntosh, Ms Long and Ms Grant will be taking maternity leave.
Once again, we are posting a Retrospective of the school year. This will give you the opportunity to reminisce about the year that was; by browsing through each term, that includes highlights, videos, photos and write-ups, all in one handy location.
It can be found here
For more information about our 2023 start-up, including dates, these can found at
I hope that you all have a good break. Next year we look forward to welcoming our returning students as well as our new Year 9s, which again will be a very large group of approximately 240 students.
Ngā mihi nui
Grant Jones
Principal
For any other information, please visit our website www.newlands.school.nz