Kōrero ō te Tumuaki

Principal's Update

September 8 2025

Tēnā koutou ki ngā whānau ō Te Kura Awaawa Iti,

Term three is quickly flying past and things are as busy as ever here at EGS.

Staff Only Days

Thank you whānau for your support of our team with their staff only day recently. We recognise that this puts pressure on many families. These days we have been given by the Ministry of Education give opportunities to up skill and get to know the new curriculum content- ultimately leading to better teaching and learning for your children.

Last Friday was the first of four days we have on the refreshed maths curriculum. We are super lucky to have Leallen to facilitate these days for us in her role with Cognition Education this year.

During the day we unpacked the structure of the refreshed maths curriculum, what we can expect children to be doing at each year level and how to most effectively deliver a programme so that all children can thrive in this learning area.

Please remember that our next Staff Only Day is on Tuesday 28 October (the day after Labour Day). We have just had confirmed that we will have four Staff Only Days available to us in 2026. We will confirm dates for these as soon as we can.

Epro8

Throughout this term our Manaaki learners have had opportunities to participate in the Epro8 programme. This is an engineering challenge which involves teams working together to complete tasks using the provided materials.

The cool thing about Epro8 is that it covers so much learning in one go. As well as the obvious technology learning, there is maths, literacy, science and even some arts learning through the tasks. As well as this, the social skills of planning and communicating as a team are fundamental to a successful outcome.

Speaking of successful outcomes, we had two teams compete in the regional competition this week, including a team that made it through to the final. They had a tricky "Indiana Jones" challenge which had them scratching their heads at points. Watching them figure things out, I was really impressed with how calm under pressure they were. Congratulations Franklyn, Maya, Sully and Maddie for the great result in the finals.

Well done to our other team who competed in the semi final, and also a big thanks to Eva and Graham for all the extra hours you put in to supporting the teams.

Class Placements 2026

As we come towards the end of Term 3 this is the time of year that schools start planning for next year. Part of this planning will include class placements.

This year we will send a form home for you to complete if you wish, which will give an opportunity to provide us with any relevant information regarding your child's learning and social development for the purpose of class placements.

As you can imagine, class placements are a complex task with many factors that we need to consider. While we will consider any requests that come to us, we cannot make any promises. We also cannot accept specific teacher requests as the make up of our class structure is not yet confirmed.

Assemblies

Unfortunately we have had to postpone our Friday assembly a couple of times this term due to the weather.

Just so that you know, where possible we will postpone assembly to the following Friday when the weather doesn't play ball. We will try and communicate any changes with you as early as possible.

Reports

Another element of our end of year processes is reporting to whānau on the progress and achievement of learners. With changes to the curriculum we are looking at how we report this year and adapting it to both the new curriculum, and our new student management system, Hero.

With our new system we will be getting all parents to log in to their Hero accounts early Term 4. This will also become our main communication platform, replacing Seesaw from the start of 2026.

More information about what reporting will look like, and how you can sign up to Hero will be out early Term 4.

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Ngā mihi nui,

John