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Pānia a huge success

Matua Rāwiri Hindle (Ngāti Kurī) joined the staff on our visit to Wharerangi marae late in January this year as we started our journey that culminated in a fantastic show on the last Thursday night of term 2. Nearly a third of the school was involved in a show which was a response to the Ngāti Pārau pūrākau about Pānia, Karitoki and their baby, Moremore. It was far from a narrative play about the couple and much more an interpretation and response to the story.The pūrākau tells of...

School Reopening - Wednesday 22 February

Tuesday 21st February Kia ora e te whānauHe mihi nui tēnei ki a koutou i roto i te āhuatanga o te wā. Koutou kua pā i te pouri, i te kino o te waipuke, nei mātou e tuku aroha ana ki a koutou.We want to acknowledge the challenging times we have all faced in the past week. Our thoughts and prayers are with those who have experienced loss. We know some of our community are staying with friends and whānau, some are still without power and some are isolated because of road damage.We are g...

CYLONE GABRIELLA UPDATE - SUN 730PM

Kia ora e te whānau. Given the potential for significant disruption and unsafe conditions as a result of conditions caused by Tropical Cyclone Gabrielle, we have made the decision to close the school for the next two days (Monday, 13 and Tuesday, 14 February). Students and staff are not required on site.We are aware it is an unpredictable situation, but we are acting out of an abundance of caution and would rather make an over-cautious decision than have students, staff and parents in unsafe co...

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Te Tohu Pai!

This week saw Pete, our caretaker, place the finishing touches on our new welcome sign. He's done a fantastic job on these. We've erected a sign by the Taradale road entrance and one in the Freyberg road entrance. For a number of months we have had trial corflute signs, and we have tried two different colour schemes. Now we've settled on the final designs and they are permanently installed with steel frames. The signs are bilingual and reflect the diversity of our kura. On the reverse side are o...

Mānawatia a Matariki

Ka rere a Matariki, ka wera te hinu! Tamatea High School celebrated Matariki on Thursday 23rd of June by planting a native ngahere. With funding and support from Matariki Tū Rākau (NZ Forestry), Panpac Ltd, One Foundation, Ray Burkett, Leon Phillips and Ngāti Kahungunu Iwi Inc, the school has been able to cover the nearly $60 thousand for plants, irrigation, electricity, mulch and landscaping. The dawn ceremony started with a blessing of the ngahere by Koro Matiu Eru and Tipene Cottrell. The ...

Year 9 Homerooms

Tamatea High School is planning for all of their Year 9 classes in 2022 to be homerooms. Deputy Principal, Nicky Anderson oversees junior school learning and is a strong advocate of the homeroom system. Whaea Nicky says ‘Our homeroom students have the same teacher for their core subjects and other teachers for their option subjects. Instead of having 8 different teachers a week, they typically only have four. This means the transition from intermediate isn’t such a huge leap. The students f...

Tamatea High Chooses Fees Free

This week the Tamatea High School Board of Trustees made the decision to sign up for the governments new ‘Donations Scheme’ which will mean that students will not be charged a donation to attend Tamatea High School in 2020.The new donations scheme will see the Ministry of Education pay the Tamatea High $150 per student instead of the school charging its normal $80 donation plus course costs. The scheme is only for schools which are decile 1 to 7 and is designed to take the pressure off famil...

Green Light for Facial Hair at Tamatea High

Liliana Rio is the Head Girl at Tamatea High School and has been a champion for her tungāne (brothers) in her role as Board of Trustees student representative. Like many schools around the country Tamatea High School had a rule that boys needed to be clean shaven. The boys questioned the rule and Liliana took their concerns to the Board of Trustees. Liliana put the case that the boys should be able to have tidy facial hair as an expression of their individuality and because facial hair has no i...

Mufti Day for Salvation Army

Last Friday, the prefects at Tamatea High School organised a mufti day to give support to the Salvation Army food bank. Each student was required to bring a can of food instead of the usual gold coin. The response from students was fantastic and a huge amount of canned food was gathered. Deputy Head Girl, Saskia Hook, said that the prefect group thought supporting the food bank was something that the school would get in behind of. It also might have been easier for them to grab a can from the pa...

Tamatea Food Festival

For the first time in twenty years Tamatea High School recently held their Food Festival Fundraiser. The school are raising money to buy a new school van and the event raised $2,500 towards the target of $45,000. The weather Gods were smiling on the school - the Friday afternoon event was warm and sunny. The High school students combined with staff and parents to run the stalls which included curry, tacos, hamburgers, hāngi, hot dogs, cakes and pancakes. Local MP Stuart Nash, assisted in sellin...

Tamatea High School Celebrates Pasifika Links

Tamatea High School students were proud to be part of the blessing performed by Reverand Leo Te Kira as the school unveiled it’s latest mural celebrating the migratory link between Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. Principal, Robin Fabish, said that the school was very lucky to have the support from artist and newly appointed Te Aute College art teacher, Dena Bach. Other contributors to the murals creation included Mika and Kaiata Kaitao, Dena’s family members and Matua Robin. �...

Bahn mi Saigon comes to Tamatea High

One of the goals at Tamatea High School is making the most of authentic learning contexts. Principal, Robin Fabish, says “High school shouldn’t be boring! We want it to be engaging and to make the most of opportunities to keep it real. We want to get our students into our community and have our community come into our school. Making connections with business owners who can inspire our students to start their own businesses is really important.” The Year 13 Food and Nutrition class were tre...

School Leaver Statistics

The principal of Tamatea High school, Robin Fabish is celebrating the schools latest school leaver statistics.He said “Last year, we set a goal to ensure that all students had meaningful pathways to pursue when they left school. Previous to that we had focused on NCEA results and worked to improve them, but we realised that while qualifications are important, they’re not how we should be measuring success – we should be ensuring that qualifications actually lead somewhere and give students...

New Teachers for Tamatea High

Two new former primary teachers are already making a good impression at Tamatea High School. Ms Meredith Ellingham has joined Tamatea High as a Year 9 home room teacher – instead of students having 8 or 9 teachers each week, Ms Ellingham takes them for their core subjects and they have two option teachers. “It makes it easier for our new students to build relationships with less teachers, improves their sense of belonging and makes the transition to high school much smoother.” Says Ms Elli...

Back to School for Principal

While some were sitting at the beach relaxing in the sun, local Tamatea High School Principal, Robin Fabish, was in Australia at Sydney University taking a Harvard University course in Educational Leadership.Fabish said that “I was very fortunate to receive a $5000 scholarship that covered the course fees and accommodation at St Pauls College which allowed me to join 170 other school leaders. Most of the other participants were from Australia and there were about a dozen from New Zealand.”Th...

Careers Speed Dating

This week forty Year 10 students at Tamatea High School were visited by a dozen employer representatives from various Hawke’s Bay organisations. Tamatea High piloted a ‘Careers Speed-dating’ event to raise student awareness of career possibilities and make connections for students and employers. The students in groups of three had 4 minutes with each representative to find out what their job is, what is good about it, what’s not so good, how much they get paid and any other questions the...

Maths Competition at Tamatea High

Last week the Head of Maths at Tamatea High School, Sanjesh Kumar, organised the inaugural Tamatea High Maths Challenge for our local primary schools. Teams of four competed to answer a list of Maths questions within the allotted time of 30 minutes. Entrants included teams from Tamatea Primary, Porritt Primary, Napier Intermediate and Tamatea Intermediate. The teams had to work together collaboratively to solve problems using their Maths ability, communication skills and creativity. Mr Kumar is ...

Black Ferns Inspire Tamatea High Students

Students at Tamatea High School were inspired by a visit from Black Fern Rugby player Kendra Cocksedge and New Zealand Women’s Sevens player Gayle Broughton. Cocksedge who also plays rugby for Canterbury is a dynamic half-back and was the first woman to score 500 NPC rugby points last year. More than that she has played for the Black Ferns since 2007 and last year she was World Women’s Rugby Player of the Year award. Kendra shared that she had written a goal with her coach to be the best rug...

Shamon and Omeka

For many Napier secondary school students last Friday was a day off school for a teacher only day. However, there was no break for Shamon Kara and Omeka Puhara who are Year 13 students at Tamatea High School.In a partnership with Tamatea Pak’nSave, there is a team of senior students who are working the 5.30am to 8am shift each weekday.  Cindy Morgan, Head of Careers at Tamatea said that “Andrew Graney, the Pak’nSave owner, came to us and offered the opportunity of early morning work f...

Young Enterprise Trust BP Business Challenge

The auditorium at Tamatea High School has been buzzing with the ideas and planning of all the Year 11 students who are taking part in the Young Enterprise Trust BP Business Challenge.What is the Challenge? Initially students go through several business challenges where they redesign a common product. Who wouldn’t like to use a shopping trolley with larger wheels, a GPS tracker and a chilled products storage section? Then the students choose a problem and develop a full business plan to solve t...

Pernambuco Students from Brazil

Tamatea High School is host to 11 students from the state of Pernambuco which is in the northeast of Brazil. The Brazilian government runs a scholarship system which student can apply to travel and study overseas. The students, who all speak Portuguese, study English and take an exam. The highest qualifiers are given the opportunity to study in Canada, the USA, Australia or New Zealand.Students at Tamatea High School are some of 50 who have come to New Zealand for 4 months....

Alamein Burns and the Tamatea High School Mural

Alamein Burns first came to live in Tamatea with her husband in 1971 and she has been a stalwart of the community ever since. Her children were schooled at Tamatea Primary School, Tamatea Intermediate and Tamatea High School. She says her mokopuna (grandchildren) also attended the local schools. In 2014, Nicola Ngarewa, then Principal of Tamatea High School, invited Alamein to work at the school in a pastoral care role. Her job includes lending school uniform and shoes to students who don’t ha...

Alumni Visit

Recently the classrooms and corridors of Tamatea High School reverberated to the stories, jokes and laughter of a large group of former students as they relived memories from 35 years ago.Arran Culver, former Head Boy (1985) is a Paediatric Psychologist for the DBH based in Wellington.  Arran contacted the school in January to advise that he and group of former classmates (enrolled in 1980 – 1981) were getting together and would like the opportunity to visit the school.John Ryan, the scho...

Rotary Club of Taradale Student Applications

This year the Government has introduced free fees for the first year of study at University. This has prompted a rethink for the Rotary Club of Taradale who have normally used funds from the Kelvin Tremain Memorial Education Trust to support first year university students with their studies. After consultation with the local High Schools the Rotary Club of Taradale called for applications from students who have displayed grit and determination. These were both qualities that the late Kel Tremai...