16 March 2025

With four weeks of the Term remaining, students need to remain focused on getting the basics right and ensuring that they meet deadlines. For our students undertaking Levels 2 and 3 NCEA in particular, assessment deadlines are looming. With so many students involved in activities in the next four weeks (the largest of which is Polyfest), deadlines can sometimes be inadvertently missed. 

Our faculties have amended their deadline policies – with processes including more frequent communication to parents about submissions by their children. In addition, we are commencing our new mentoring initiative which involves students across Years 11 to 13. 

This is an evolution of our academic counselling model, with groups of students being assigned to a teacher based on ‘spheres of influence’ that is, where student and teacher naturally cross paths due to mutual involvement in a sport, cultural activity, a pursuit in the arts, a club, or in the classroom. This mentoring will involve one-to-one conversations with each student in the programme across three-week cycles. Sometimes challenges arise, and the academic performance of a student may not reflect that student’s talent and potential. The mentoring conversations are designed to provide the support those students need to achieve their academic goals and reach their full potential. For many of our Year 13 cohort, those conversations will take place in their timetabled Next Steps class.

Each conversation will be documented and shared with the student, and with their parents/caregivers. We make no apologies for increasing the amount of communication we have with parents and caregivers about their child/children as our shared goal is to ensure that all enjoy the success they are capable of.

The highlight of the last two weeks was our Tabloids Day – the first House Competition event of the year. The day was superbly organized by our Sports Leaders Lucy Ward and Madison Williams, with assistance from other student leaders and Deputy Principal Jon Taura. The day was one of fun, colour, and a strong sense of identity (particularly amongst our Year 9s in the wake of their recent Whanaungatanga Days at Parakai). Participation in events was high (special mention to 9MTW who logged 100% participation in the activities). With this being a full school event, the points won by each House are kept secret until the end of the year to ensure that the winner of the competition can’t be guessed prior to the announcement at Senior Prizegiving.

We also had a visit from current All Black and Blues winger Mark Telea (Massey High School class of 2014) on Wednesday 5th March. Mark spoke to the students in our Rugby Academy, highlighting the importance of working hard and focusing on goals – both sporting and non-sporting. He also spoke about the importance of family. Our Academy students were then joined on the field by Mark who led skills sessions with them.

Our Rugby Academy this year has over 140 students and is held every Wednesday morning. Shortly, this will be joined by our new Football Academy (which will focus on our younger players). We are also looking to extend the academy model into a couple of other sports and apply it to students wishing to undertake Scholarship exams at the end of the year.

On the topic of rugby, we have just welcomed to the school a visiting party from Collingwood School in Canada. At the time of writing, they have just participated in a whakatau. They have two teams playing against Massey this afternoon and will then enjoy hangi with our teams before departing.

Today I had the privilege of seeing our Girls and Boys Volleyball Teams in action at the Auckland Championships in Takanini (The boys were triumphant over Mt Roskill Grammar, the girls played well and nearly took the second set before finally succumbing to a strong Westlake Girls side). Both teams played incredibly well and were brilliant representatives of Massey High School. My thanks to the coaching staff Rudy Aso, Marvis Pauli, Meafou Vaigalu, and Motu Pauli who have prepared the teams so well, and to the managers Georgie Simmons and Jasmine Tuitama. It’s a very long three days at the tournament and their work is hugely appreciated.

Best of luck to Ada Kim and Harveer Talwar who have been invited to the next step of the selection process to become the Youth Member of Parliament (Upper Harbour) 2025. They will each be presenting to a panel of judges and Cameron Brewer MP for Upper Harbour next week.

Finally, congratulations to our Silver Tie Prefects who were named on Tuesday 4th March. The following students have been added to the wider student leadership team.

Silver Badge Prefects 2025