While the year 8’s were in Rotorua, our year 7’s participated in a number of EOTC activities, some were based at Orakei basin, engaging in kayaking, rafting and other water-based activities. Some were based at Windmill Park, where the focus was on bivvy making, outdoor first aid, and cooking in the outdoors. And the last day was spent at school, climbing, doing archery and providing some opportunities for some team building and leadership skills.

These opportunities are absolutely key to the education our tauira need. These activities allow for challenge and require different thinking. They also require different communication skills and put people into, at times, uncomfortable situations. Absolutely essential for our this age and stage of life. 

At the end of last term, we completed our termly pulse point survey, which continues to give us good data on how we are going on many aspects of what we do in our school. 

Term 1 2026 Pulse point Survey 

Gender comparison

Year level comparison 

As you can see, we continue to move forward in almost all areas of our school year on year, which is pleasing. Some of the interesting data for us to be aware of is that, generally, our girls feel slightly more positive about things than our boys, and our year 7’s generally feel slightly more positive than our year 8’s. The idea of challenge being good for my learning continues to be an area of work for us, as well as ensuring that our tauira have an understanding of our āhua (values). 

We also completed our end-of-term academic testing, which also showed some good trends. The table below shows the percentage of tauira from ANI as compared to the national average. For students who are meeting expectations or those who are on track to meet expectations.  

This allows us to monitor those that are going well and continue to ensure they stay on this trajectory, as well as identify those tauira that need accelerating because at this stage they are slightly lower than they expected. Although we are a long way ahead of the national average, we are focused on ensuring that every tauira reaches their potential, including their academic potential, in the time they are at ANI. 

Another good piece of data that has come in at the start of this term was our data on last term’s attendance. You will be aware of the push that the government and the ministry have been making over the last two years, with an aspirational target of having at least 80% of students at school more than 90% of the time. As a school, we have been working hard on ensuring our tauira are at school, as we know that the more that a tauira is at school the greater the achievement and success the tauira will have and it was great to see with the support of our whānau that in term 1 we had 83% reach the regular attendance threshold (90%+ attendance) thank you for the continued support. We know that this is the time of the year when we get sick, so please ensure that if your child is sick, you keep them home and let us know. 

As we focus on the rest of the term, we are concentrating on our Āhua, of Rangatiratanga and in particular leading ourselves. Being upstanders and making sure we stand up for what we believe in. 

Ngā mihi nui,

Jason Pocock

Principal ANI