Principal's Welcome 

25th November 2022 (Friday)

Kia Ora Tātou

This will be the second to last newsletter for the year. Year 12 and 13 students are completing their NCEA exams, and some have already finished. Year 11 have completed their exams and will be confirming their subjects for 2023 early next week. They have less than a week left of school for the year. Prizewinners from all three year levels will be recognised at the Senior Prizegiving on Monday 28 November. I always enjoy prizegivings as they provide the opportunity for us to celebrate academic success and the gaining of university and school-based scholarships.

A hot political and media topic at the moment is the low school attendance rates. I feel there is the need for some clarification. Nationally, there are concerns about attendance rates, particularly from term 2, and the high percentage of students classed as not having regular attendance. Regular attendance is measured as 90% plus or less than one day’s absence per fortnight or five days in a term. This means that if your child had Covid or was isolating as a close family contact, they would have been considered as not being a regular attender at school for that term, never mind the impact of any other illness.

In term 2, the regular attendance rate at Glendowie College was just over 40% of students. I don’t consider that this was because your children were being deliberately truant or off ram-raiding business premises. It was because they were genuinely sick or required to stay home. Another interpretation of the statistics had a daily average of 86.5% of our students being at school in term 2. I try to be non-political in my comments, but the remarks made by both Christopher Luxon and David Seymour about school principals show either a complete lack of understanding of the attendance statistics or a deliberate attempt to use principals as scapegoats for political gain.

I accept there are students seriously disengaged from school as a result of the lockdowns and a myriad of other reasons. We have a few and I know how hard staff have been working with parents and outside agencies to try to re-engage them. For some principals to be described as ‘absolutely hopeless’ by Seymour is insulting and shows that he has no comprehension of the complexity involved in getting disengaged students back to school. These comments are particularly irksome when I know how difficult it was to keep the college running as close to normal as possible in term 2 given the scale of student and staff absence.

Rant over. There are two weeks of school remaining. There will be a number of events focussed on the Years 9 and 10 students. It would be great if parents could make either of the two events scheduled on Thursday 1 December. Immediately after school on that day is the MYP exhibition showcasing classwork, the Year 10 community projects and the Inter Disciplinary Unit undertaken at Year 9. Later that evening is the Junior Music Concert. Our students are engaged in learning and want to be involved in the wider life of the school and community.

Ngā mihi nui

Gordon Robertson

Principal

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