5 April 2022

Kia ora tatou

When I started my new role at Papanui High School, I could never have envisaged that so much of my job in Term 1 would have been learning about traffic lights, PCR tests, hybrid learning, household contacts and isolation periods.  

Each week we have assessed the impact that COVID has had on the Canterbury region and looked at how this might affect the students and staff at Papanui High School.  We have tried to adjust teaching and learning programmes and have reluctantly postponed favourite events, particularly those where we can share student success with caregivers and whanau.

We were lucky that some co-curricular activities could still go ahead and that strategies such as mask wearing, participating in PE outside and physical distancing become commonplace in school relatively quickly.  This has allowed a high percentage of our students to attend school this term without coming into contact with COVID.

However with increasing absences of staff and students in the middle part of this term, we went to Phase 2 of our COVID Response plan in Week 7 and we began rostering home and hybrid learning.  We really appreciate that caregivers have supported this process and it has helped us to be able to provide continuous teaching and learning this term.

With this in mind we will need to continue to roster home in Week 11.  These will be the same days as Week 9 and 10 as below.  Thursday is the last day of Term 1.

Week 11 Rostered Home days.

As we move to a period of uncertainty over the break, we will continue to monitor the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education bulletins so that we are able to plan for Term 2 with up-to-date information.  We will communicate what is happening in Term 2 in the second week of the holidays where hopefully we will have more clarity of the national picture and how that is affecting us locally.

Reports will be sent home for juniors next week.  These are to give caregivers an indication of their student’s engagement in the learning during Week 6-11 of this term. We will be reporting on progress and achievement later in the year.  Teachers will also be working to provide information to senior students and their caregivers about progress this term.  The senior reports will be available at the end of Week 1, Term 2.

If your student tests positive for COVID or becomes a Household Contact please continue to let us know by emailing [email protected]

If you have any questions, comments or feedback about our COVID Response please email [email protected]

Ngā mihi

Stacey Fry

(Associate Principal)