year 9 students participating in an activity run by our peer support leaders.
The school year has begun very positively at Kaipara College as we celebrated 2024 NCEA success and began introducing our students to new initiatives designed to support further success in every area of school life.
Our student’s success in NCEA in 2024 is a culmination of a lot of hard work over the last three years on the part of both students and staff. It was thrilling to see improved results at Year 12 and 13, and that we had smashed the numeracy and literacy achievement out of the park, being well above the national average results.
It is with great excitement that we launch our new initiatives to support and bolster this success in an ongoing way – vertical whanau classes and our new Tira (house) system. Each Tira is named after a part of a waka and is associated with a whakataukii (Maori proverb). The Tira complement our school values of Te WAKA o Kaipara and new vertical whanau classes. The purpose of establishing Tira in our kura along with vertical whanau classes is to support a values-driven community, increase a sense of belonging for students and ultimately increase student agency and engagement in learning, leading to academic and personal success and excellence.
Despite these exciting changes, Kaipara College is settling well into a calm routine that focuses on maximising learning and achievement for all. Our high expectations around positive behaviour for learning through our school values, effort, participation and achievement have been reiterated at assemblies last week and for our Year 9 students also at a session with me as part of their orientation days on “how to do school”. I also explained to our students our focus this year is “learning on purpose”, not leaving their success to chance but being purposeful in their approach, setting goals and working hard to achieve them. This will be supported for our students through work in their whanau time but ultimately must be driven by them. Also our peer support programme is in full swing allowing our Year 13 students to mentor and work alongside our year 9 students.
At Kaipara College we communicate frequently with our school whanau through newsletters, social media and to report on student achievement. Since last year we have emailed families a fortnightly update on student achievement. This provides frequent and up-to-date information on how the student is going at school in terms of their academic work and their behaviour for learning. Families then have the opportunity to not only track their student’s progress but also discuss this with their young person. This is another measure we have introduced to support student success.
I am looking forward to seeing where all of these initiatives take us in another exciting year full of learning.
