Kia ora te whanau o te kotuku

Literacy/Numeracy Pilot

You may have heard about the new Literacy and Numeracy corequisite exams being introduced into NCEA. Rutherford College is offering Year 10 students the opportunity to sit these exams in June (Term 2) and October (Term 4). If your child has been invited to participate in the first session (June 12 – 14), you should already have received communication home. Students who are entered into this first opportunity need to check that their devices can log into the school network and have at least two-hours’ battery life. More information about the Literacy and Numeracy assessments can be found at: https://ncea.education.govt.nz/ncea-literacy-and-numeracy-students-and-whanau

PPTA Action

In term two the PPTA plan to continue industrial action which will have an impact on all students.

The Employment Relations Authority has directed PPTA into facilitated bargaining. Facilitated bargaining is required to be conducted in private and there are some limitations on what can be shared. We will endeavour to keep you informed about any progress or proposed action as soon as we hear directly from PPTA or the Ministry of Education.

The facilitator can make recommendations about the process the parties should use to reach agreement and / or the terms and conditions of the collective agreement. PPTA and the Ministry of Education don’t have to follow these recommendations but they must consider them in good faith.

Therefore the continuation of the relief ban and a ban on attending meetings outside of school hours is underway.

The rostering home of year levels is planned to begin next week.

For Rutherford College this means that the following year levels will be rostered home:

• 4 May – Year 11 (Please note this is the day of PSST conferences. They will go ahead as planned at the time of 2pm – 8pm). 
• 9 May – Year 12
• 11 May – National strike day for Auckland and all year levels will be rostered home
• 16 May – Year 9
• 17 May – Year 10
• 25 May – Year 11
• 30 May – Year 13 
• 01 June – Year 12
• 06 June – Year 10
• 08 June – Year 9
• On the days each individual year level is rostered home all other year levels will continue to attend class as normal. 

We realise this is not ideal and we thank you for your continued support of the school as we navigate through this unpredictable period. We hope that the negotiations proceed with speed and a resolution is reached soon. Any planned action can be suspended or withdrawn if there is significant progress made in negotiations. 

If there is no progress in negotiations by Week 4 of this term, there will be further consultation with members that week on potential next steps for the end of Term 2 and the start of Term 3. We hope that this will not be necessary so that students and whanau can get back to normal schooling as soon as possible.

Any student who needs to come to school during the time they are rostered home should register here so that we can accommodate them with appropriate supervision.

At this stage all year 9 camps will be proceeding as planned. If this changes we will advise you accordingly.

NEW GATES

As previously mentioned in the Principal’s Panui our new gates have been installed and will be operational some time the week commencing Monday 1 May. This means that the gates will be closed during school hours. Access will only be granted by reception. If your entry is not urgent, we request you find parking in the surrounding area and use the pedestrian accessway. The Baptist Church on Old Te Atatu Road will allow parents to use their carpark for drop off and pick ups before and after school. If you are picking up your son or daughter from the Health clinic the best access point is through the Toru Street entrance. Push the bell on the keypad to ring reception. The reason we are limiting access is to provide staff and students with additional security during the school day. 

The gates will be open Monday to Friday from 3.30pm for sport and Community Education classes. The gates will also be open all day Saturday for sport and Community Education classes. We thank you for your support as we endeavour to make Rutherford College a safe place for our students and staff.

PSST Conferences – 4 May

As mentioned above PSST conferences will continue to run on Thursday 4 May. Y11 students are rostered home that day but are welcome to attend conferences with their parents. There are still a few bookings available for parents to book. Please log in to the School Portal (note you can now log in using your Facebook, Microsoft or Google credentials i.e. you do not need to use the password generated by the school, you use your own password for those accounts). Click on PSST conferences and choose the teachers you want to see. Note we did have a small period of time when bookings were offline, but this problem has now been fixed. Bookings close Thursday 4 May at 9am.

Celebrating Success
We were delighted to hear of the success of our Head Student 2022, Andre Fa’aoso who has been accepted into Yale. Andre was an outstanding young man and thoroughly deserves the recognition and the opportunity this affords him. Andre not only achieved excellent results, he was an amazing young man who wanted to give back to his community and school. He showed this in his role as head boy in 2022 by role modelling the Rutherford values on a daily basis. Read the full article by New Zealand Herald here or watch him on the Project here.

We are incredibly proud of Andre and his amazing achievement.

Upcoming events:

2 and 3 May – Year 9 Mindfulness Trip. Tuesday classes 9AR, 9BW, 9BN, 9BM, 9CT, 9EL will be travelling to the temple and on 3 May (Wednesday) 9HY, 9MK, 9MN, 9SC, 9TO, and 9VA.
15-19 May Y9 Stars Camp. Camp One 15 – 17 May is 9AR, 9BM, 9BN, 9CT, 9HY and 9TO. Camp Two 17 – 19 May is 9BW, 9EL, 9MK, 9MN, 9SC, 9VA
19 May – Pink Shirt Day
05 June – King’s Birthday – school closed
06 – 08 June – International Week
15/16 June Art Show/auction
19 – 22 June LUV Music
27/28 June Drama Show
29 June – School Ball, T2 Progress Reports and last day of term.

Read all the latest Rutherford news here.

Kia kaha
Judy Farrar