Weekly Wrap 7 March 2025

Kia ora koutou

With the advent of March, we were quickly reminded this week that Autumn is well and truly on its way! I think we have been lucky compared to what is currently happening on the east coast of Australia. Our thoughts are with our neighbours at this time.

Unfortunately, this cold snap saw a few students wearing non-regulation items of clothing around the college. As the weather gets colder students will need to either wear the college jumper, a black jacket or thermal tops under the long sleeve version of the college shirt if they are cold.

Year 12 (Year 11, 2024) Academic Awards Ceremony

On Tuesday this week, we had the first of our new look academic award ceremonies with our Year 11’s in 2024 being the first group of students to go through the new version of the NCEA Level 1 qualification. This was a huge milestone – not just for the students as individuals, but for the teachers and entire school community. Our teachers managed to successfully implement and deliver completely new standards last year. This system might be new to us, but in a few years, students will look at this as just “the way things are done,” never knowing the challenges and changes that this group of students faced along the way. This ceremony was also created as a result of these changes. With 25% fewer credits available in every course determining award winners was certainly a challenge for the staff. We were not able to award an overall top student in each subject, but we have been able to identify the top scholars over the year.

Congratulations to the following students who all received a Principal’s Award for All-round contribution to school life:

Ally Fellows, Carter, Madge, Olivia Chung and Annabelle Connolly.

Our top scholars awarded a Principal’s Award and prize are:

Dana Kim, Lily Dutton, Elsa Amaya, Aroha Perigrine, Keelan Gedye and Oscar Wood.

Our final top scholar award of the Huston Family Trophy and Norrcom Prize for overall academic excellence in Year 11 was awarded to:

Manit Desai.

Congratulations to all award winners.

Junior (Year 9 & 10) Parent/Teacher Interviews - Thursday 20 March

Parent Teacher Interviews for Year 9 and 10 students will be held on Thursday 20 March with their subjects teachers....

International Students

It is wonderful for us to be able to host international students here at Paraparaumu College and we currently have 53 students from Brazil, China, Germany, Japan and Korea. Some of these will be with us for most of their schooling and others for short stays We also welcome groups throughout the year for short term visits.

With this in mind we are currently looking for host families to host Japanese students from the 'Kamakura' group coming to us again from 22 - 28 March. They will be arriving in the afternoon on Saturday and departing on Friday morning.

This group comes to us every year and the students would ideally be hosted in pairs. They can either have their own room each or alternatively share a bedroom, providing they have their own bed.

You will receive $55 per student, per night.

If you are able to assist please email international@pc.school.nz.

Relay for Life Car Wash

Our Relay for Life team is having a car wash tomorrow, Saturday 8 March (9am to 1pm) outside the front of the school. Please come and support this worthy cause. Only $5.00!

Senior (Year 12/13) Ball - Saturday 10 May

Our annual senior ball will be taking place at Southwards on Saturday 10 May. This is very much a highlight for our Year 12 & 13 students.

Tickets for the event are $85 and these will be going on sale on Wednesday 12th March. Tickets can be bought through the school website, via online banking or from the school office. Information will be coming out to students by email next week.

Girl Up Group - Love Grace appeal

Over the last three weeks the Girl Up group have collected handbags and products, and run a bake sale to raise money to be spent on contents for the handbags. Today, the group and their staff-leads Kate Cormack and Anita Titter, donated 14 well-stocked handbags to Kamni Raju-Russell, the regional facilitator of the Love Grace appeal. These bags will now be donated to the local Women's Refuge to be given to empower women in domestic abuse situations.

The group would like to extend their thanks to the students, staff and wider community who donated items to the appeal.