School Closed - Thursday 16 March 2023

Primary and Secondary Schools across the country will be closed for instruction next Thursday 16 March.

Our tamariki need a quality education. And we want to give that to them.

Unfortunately, the funding for our schools is not enough for us to give us the time we would like to support all our kids to thrive.

We need to attract and retain educators by ensuring that teaching is a valued and attractive profession.

Principals and teachers in primary and area schools have considered at length offers from the government to settle our respective collective agreements.

The offers did not meet our expectations, nor make sufficient steps towards the changes we need for our children to succeed.

You may have seen that we voted to take industrial action on 16 March.

It’s the last thing we wanted to do. And the decision was not taken lightly.

We felt that this was the only way the government would listen and recognise that when they support our children to learn and succeed, we are supporting whānau and communities to thrive.

We look forward to another great year in 2023 – and together with your support, building the case for better investment in our tamariki.

Western Athletics

All the best to all our students going to Western Athletics on Monday at Takitimu Primary School. I look forward to going up and supporting our students and watching them perform to the best of their abilities.

Nga mihi,

Simon Bell

This week the Tree-House has been looking at our planet. We made some rockets to launch to the moon and we also had Eden, Georgie, Cassidy and Jax join us for their first school visits.