Week 3 Term 3, 2025

Cross country planning is well underway. Tayla Nicholson has taken over the running of the event and there are a few changes happening. The whole school will head down to support all year levels. Tarpaulins will be down on the farm for students to sit on as well as a toilet facility.  No tramping up the hill again for those who need to go.

The event is on the farm next to the school. To get there, students will move down the gully steps and out the gate at the bottom of the gully onto the farm. Parents can park on a field accessible from State Highway 1. The course will be set and mowed for easy access.  Running shoes are a must.  Wearing house colours shows commitment to the Whare Tiaki houses.

To make this event work, there needs to be parent support. A Google Form is set up to record your names and when you are able to help. Otherwise, you can call the office and leave your name and details. Tayla is able to work around your child's races so that you get to see them in action.

Wairakei Primary School Cross Country 2025 parent helper form

Parent Teacher Discussions and Reporting

There was a great turn out to the parent teacher evening. We had 73% of parents in attendance on the night. This is a perfect opportunity to talk about your child and their learning, to hear from class teachers about what happens during a learning day and how engaged they are in the opportunities offered.

The online report form started the conversation about what to report on.  Moving away from the PaCT reports meant that the report designs were started from scratch - with more changes being planned for the end of year report. The addition of the PAT graphs into the reports for Years 3 to 6 was a stop-gap as the teachers are learning the new reporting expectations coming to them from the Ministry.  There will be additional information and support on the five levels of achievement for the end of year report.  The Parent Portal will give you more information about the proposed changes in reporting.

Etap @myschool

The roll out of the @school portal occurred on Friday, July 18, 2025. Some issues occurred with emails not being correctly recorded. Following parent teacher discussions, the feedback was that the majority of parents have logged in and seen the benefits that are within the @school portal. There are direct links to Lunch Online, the school newsletters and recording absences. As parents, you can also see your child's absences in real time. On @school, there is a number notification (in the right hand corner of the symbol), indicating when something new has been published. In the future, booking a parent teacher discussion and signing permission slips will be available through this platform. Adding the transport form to @school seeks to make life easier for parents. I have also added the parent helper form for the cross country. We do need some helpers for the day.

Board Elections.

All parents have been sent emails from the Returning Officer calling for nominations for the Board elections.  Alongside these emails, there has been information in the newsletter, on the school Facebook and the Tile.  Val Mansfield is the Returning Officer and she can help you make nominations and direct you to an existing board member who can answer any questions.

Pet Day

This annual school event is coming around fast. Saturday, October 11, 2025 from 8.30a.m. to 12.30p.m. is the day. This change moves it forward from November so students can attend the Reporoa Group day on Friday, October 24, 2025, being held at Reporoa Primary School.

There will be information coming out to all families about Pet Day in Week 5.

One of the issues we face with having Pet Day earlier is having the flowers to be used on Flower Day. The second issue is having as many parents as possible on the morning 9:00a.m. till 11.00a.m. on Friday, October 10, to support students with Flower Day and to assist in moving the final products to the hall.

Teacher only day

School will be closed on Tuesday, October 28, 2025. All teachers will be working with the refreshed Mathematics curriculum.

General

Room 9 hosted the whole school assembly on Friday. The whole class shared some impressive art work that they have been working on. They were joined by Room 16 who shared some cave pictures as part of their Making a Mark concept. There was more singing than usual. The next assembly will be on Friday, August 8, 2025 at 9.10a.m. Room 14 is hosting. All parents are invited to attend and to be a part of the assembly.

Ngā manaakitanga,
Paula Farquhar
Principal – Tumuaki