Friday, 7 February 2025 | Term 1 | Week

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51st annual Principal’s Report on Mahurangi College

Mrs Martin and Board of Trustees members, Counsellor Penny Webster, special guests, staff, parents, family members, and students, it is my pleasure to present to you the 51^st annual Principal’s Report on Mahurangi College.

Nau mai, haere mai

Haere mai ki runga o tenei kura

Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena katou katoa

Exactly 2 weeks ago in this auditorium we had our basketball Prizegiving, where we celebrated the successes and achievements of our students in basketball this year.  The guest speaker was Lawrence Lianda from the Breakers who gave us a powerful message from the 3^rd world, the majority world.  He walked up to this podium and beamed out at us with a big African smile and he asked us 3 questions:

Who here tonight feels lucky?  Who feels fortunate?  Who feels blessed? 

Each time my hand went straight up.  He then told us a little about his story growing up in Nairobi in Kenya and then in another large Kenyan city, Mobassa, and he challenged us to make the most of the opportunities and the gifts that each of us has been given.  He said we do this through hard work.  There is no other way.  And he challenged us to not be afraid of failure along the way because failure is the pathway to success.  He said it is better to go through life with many failures than to succeed at everything but to have never extended ourselves or, even worse, to have achieved the wrong things in life.

Just 5 weeks prior to that my wife and I had been in Kenya.  We were there for 3 weeks, during my sabbatical in term 3, visiting our eldest son and his wife who are working this year in the highlands of Kenya.  And just the day before Lawrence spoke to us I had shown our junior and middle school students at assembly some photos from Kenya, including some families we had visited, all of whom lived in mud or tin huts with no electricity and who basically lived off their small plot of land.  We sponsor one of the boys in this photo and his family lived only 40 minutes by motor bike from where we were staying.  His mother and his aunty both work in the tea fields picking tea leaves 12 hours a day for 70 shillings a day, which is just under $US1 a day. 

And this photo is a class of 14/15 year old students at a junior high school in the highlands of Kenya.  The interesting point about this photo as that while we were over there the Kenyan teachers were all on strike.  We met the lady in this photo, who taught at this school, and she agreed to take us in to see around the buildings.  We walked into this classroom and I was not expecting any students at all.  There are 36 students in that class and every one of them was there, even though there was no teacher.  One of the students was out front teaching and they were all listening.  They had no idea we were coming in to visit.  And they had been there since 6am that morning.

These students know that if they do not get a good education they will end up spending the rest of their lives picking tea for 12 hours a day in the tea fields.

In comparison to this, just 5 days ago the London based Legatum Prosperity Index was published.  It is based on 89 different indicators of prosperity, including a range of social as well as economic factors.  NZ was ranked as the world’s 5^th most “prosperous” nation out of 110 countries.  And our education system was ranked number one.

We are very, very fortunate in this country.  We have a wonderful standard of living and a truly world class education system, yet so often we all take it for granted and do not fully appreciate or make the most of the opportunities we have. 

In February this year we awarded a record 31 academic blues to students who had gained NCEA endorsed with excellence – to do this they needed to achieve 50 or more credits at excellence level in one year.  We were fortunate to have a past student from our school, James Johnston, who was our Head Boy in 2005, to award these academic blues.  Last year he was the top student from the 220 graduating doctors at Auckland University Medical school.

Our 2011 NCEA results were again very pleasing, not just in the number of excellence and merit awards achieved but also in terms of overall pass rates.

At L1 our students were 7.9% above na and 2.3% above D8. 

At L2 they were 2.2% above na and 0.3% above D8.

At L3 they were 10.1% above na and 8.6% above D8.

Our Maori students also continued to perform well in NCEA.

At L1 our Maori students were 9.3% above the na for Maori and 2.9% above the D8 average for Maori.

At L2 they were 12.2% above the na for Maori and 8.7% above D8.

At L3 they were 18.7% above na and 20.3% above the D8 average for Maori.

These are outstanding results and I am sure the support of parents and staff in Te Ara Poutama contributed towards this. 

Our boys at L1 were 1.5% above na but 4.8% below D8 average.

At L2 our boys were 2.1%above na and 0.2% below D8.

At L3 our boys were 8.2% above na and 6.4% above D8.

Our girls, at L1 were 11% above na and 5.3% above D8.

At L2 our girls were 2.7% above na and 0.2% above D8.

At L3 our girls were 13.2% above na and 10.6% above D8.

There were 15 subject scholarships, 4 in English, 4 in Statistics, 2 in Chemistry, 2 in Media, 2 in Design and 1 in Biology.

This year we have introduced e-Learning within the college. 16 of our students were enrolled in 6 different courses taught in other schools through video conferencing.  In return, our e-teacher, Mr Dempster, taught Web Design to 7 students from other schools spread throughout the country.

The sporting and cultural blues were held 2 weeks ago.  At the cultural blues we were treated to some amazing performances – I always see this as one of the most enjoyable evenings of the year, as we celebrate various achievements and successes in the visual and performing arts, including the Kapa haka and Pasifika cultural groups, the jazz band, both choirs, drama, dance, various speech competitions, the school show and the stage challenge.  We were also treated this year to two items from our Performing Arts Academy, which had a very successful inaugural year under the skilled tutelage of Mrs Lyn Dashper.

The Visual Arts person of the year was Tazmin Waata.

The Performing Arts person of the year was Katie Kuo.

The Cultural Person of the year was shared between Ruahei Demant and Scott Dirven.

The next night, at the sporting blues we were privileged to have as our guest speaker Stephanie Hazard, a past student of our school and captain of our school sailing team, who this year was skipper of the NZ women’s match racing team at the London Olympics.  She presented 126 blues to students who had gained regional representation or better in their sports, and 13 high achiever awards to those who had gained national representation. 

The national reps, in alphabetical order, were:

Kiritapu Demant – NZ secondary schools and NZ U19 Touch teams

Ruahei Demant – NZ secondary schools and NZ U19 Touch teams

Thea Henderson – 1^st in NZ at level 5 gymnastics

Jessica Innes in Soccer – NZ U17 girls’ team and attended FIFA U17 world cup

Kayne Middleton – NZ secondary schools and NZ U19 Touch teams

Lauren Mitchell – NZ secondary schools mixed touch team

Brooke Moka – NZU17 girls touch team

Elizabeth Murphy – 1^st in NZ junior pistol shooting

Alice Noyer – 1^st in the NZ starling class match racing sailing competition, and Alice was the first female ever to win this national title

Ariaana Osborne – NZ U17 girls’ touch team

Rhys Panui-Leth – NZ open mens’ AFL team

Kortne Pearson – national secondary school wrestling champion and member of NZ team where she won gold medal at the Oceania championships

Michael-Lydia Winiana – NZ U19 Touch team

I am sure some these students will continue to achieve at the very highest of levels in their sports - we may even have some more future Olympians in this group. Rhys Panui-Leth has been awarded a contract to play professional AFL in Australia and Kayne Middleton has won a scholarship to study next year at Teikyo University in Tokyo, Japan and to represent them in rugby. 

Kayne was also the joint sportsman of the year, along with Shane Dawson.  The sportswoman of the year was Michael-Lydia Winiana.  But Kayne was a way in Japan at the time of our academic blues so is not included in this photo.

Let us congratulate all these students for their cultural and sporting successes this year.

The house system has again operated effectively within the school with many closely contested inter-house activities, including what we euphemistically call the inter-house “athletics” competition organized for us by our senior leaders each year, which is always a lot of fun.

The new building project has presented a few challenges for us this year with a shortage of classroom space and restricted movement around the school, but this will all be forgotten once we have our new office, our new student services centre and 14 new classrooms, including 5 specialist rooms.

During Easter this year we celebrated our 50^th Jubilee.  The old Warkworth District High School became Mahurangi College at the start of 1962.  It was wonderful to welcome back over 600 past students and staff from Mahurangi College and from the old WDHS.  I was particularly pleased with the feedback I received about our current students who volunteered to come and assist over this weekend, all of whom were wonderful ambassadors for our school.

This year we also celebrated the 50^th Hauraki Plains exchange between the two colleges.  It was, as always closely contested with HP winning 4 of the 8 events, MC 3 and there was one draw.  That evening we had a celebration dinner and 2 of the original coaches from the first exchange in 1963 were present at that dinner – the coach of the HP girls’ hockey team, and Maida Cook, who was coach of our Snr A Netball team at that time.

During tem 2 we had a visit from the Education Review Office, ERO.  The written report on our school is again very pleasing – it was released at the end of term 3 and is now online.  It states:

The school tone is settled and positive.  Students are proud of their school.   Students are engaged in their learning and in school life.  They enjoy many opportunities to participate in and experience success in academic, sport, culture, the arts and leadership activities.  Students benefit from positive relationships with their teachers.  Good quality teaching is evident as are many high quality practices.  Students in Years 11-13 achieve well above national levels and above levels in similar schools.

This report could not have been achieved without the committed and dedicated efforts of our teaching staff who have again this year excelled in their teaching and in their contribution to the wider life of our school.  So let us all thank and congratulate our teachers on another very successful year.

Two of our staff deserve special congratulations:

Our Head of Mathematics, Mr Justin Basevi, was awarded a Royal Society Fellowship for terms 3 and 4 this year to work on practical applications of mathematics, which for him involves systems of navigation using the stars.

And our Head of Languages Faculty, Mrs Jenny McDonald, has been awarded a Woolf Fisher Fellowship, of which only 15 are awarded each year to outstanding teachers from throughout NZ.  The fellowship will pay for Mrs McDonald to travel overseas for 3 weeks in 2013 to see best practice in her curriculum area. 

At the end of this year we are sad to be farewelling our longest serving teacher, Mr Ross Segedin.  He joined the staff of Mahurangi College as a Maths teacher in June 1976, so he has been here 36 and a half years.  He has taught statistics through to Y13, which for most of that time was known as the 7^th form.  He has always coached sport including rugby for many years, athletics and badminton.  He has always been involved in outdoor education and was one of the original staff who set up the 3^rd form camp, now known as the Y9 camp, at Kaueranga Valley.  Mr Segedin is the only teacher to have been to all 18 of these camps so far.  He is now retiring, but we are very hopeful he will still come to come to help with Y9 camp next year, which will be the 20^th year.  He has agreed to come and relieve for us in term 2 next year when one of our Maths staff has been granted leave for that term. 

We appreciate your contribution to the college Ross – he has taught 2 of my sons and done a wonderful job with each of them.  We will miss you greatly.  We wish you all the best for a long and happy retirement.

To those of you leaving Mahurangi College at the end of this year – first of all, thank you for the contribution you have made, and secondly, we wish you every success and God’s blessing as you move on to this next stage in your life.  Always work hard at everything you do, never be afraid of failure, attempt great things in your life and see what you can achieve.

And finally, in the words of Lawrence Lianda, let us all remember how very, very lucky and fortunate and blessed we are, and let us each make sure we use the gifts and the opportunities we have been given to reach our potential in life. 

Noko ora mai

Tena koutou katoa