Tena koutou katoa. Nga mihi nui atawhai.

The Alert levels are changing next Monday. It’s been 13 days of online learning so far, this term. We reverted to online learning more seamlessly this time. We had the systems already set up and it was just a case of switching over. It wasn’t such an unknown as last time but still very frustrating. We’d settled back into our ‘normal’ onsite learning and were just hoping that we could remain this way – that this would be the normal way of life from now on. It wasn’t to be.

Our ‘normal’ way of learning is going to rely more on this flexibility and adaptability. We are continuing to adjust and work hard to minimise the effect that this continuing change in learning is having on our students.

Our focus has been on our senior students and their upcoming practice external exams. Naturally, our students are anxious about being properly prepared for these practice exams as these can be used for derived grades if a student is unable to sit the real exams in November.

There has been a lot of work done by our HODs to look at these external standards and determine if there are other ways to gather ‘naturally occurring’ evidence other than a timed test. We have removed the practice exams week, allowing for more teaching time and thereby easing the work load for our students. We will still be able to give students a clear indication of where they are with these external standards so they know where to focus their revision.

We are also accessing external funding for our pastoral team to further support our students when we return onsite.

Our Option Information Evening was done virtually and parents and students should now have more specific information about how to access this and also, more information about changes to our practice exams.

As an opinion piece stated in the Weekend Herald, ‘Our world has changed. Our hopes for it to be better have not. Our thoughtful human actions ….., will ease the pangs of fear and dread, nourishing use for the fight still to be won.’