Friday 16th May 2025

16th May 2025

Kia ora whanau

Thanks for all your support during this term to date. It has been a busy time. Since the last newsletter we have really been able to focus on teaching and learning without too many interruptions. Personally, I was fortunate last week to travel to Auckland with Head Boy Lachlan Wright to attend the annual All Boys Schools national conference. It was reassuring, as always, to reflect on the undeniable evidence that boys learn best in an all-boys environment and share best practice with likeminded colleagues. Probably my biggest ‘takeaways’ were reminders of the importance of structured and consistent classroom teaching and a presentation from an esteemed American professor who categorically stated that ‘rote’ (memory) learning is most effective. I know Lachlan also had a memorable time (a highlight being the 2km ‘mud run’) and has made some friends for life. He looks forward to sharing his ‘takeaways’ with the prefect team in due course.

Speaking of the prefects they continue to do a wonderful job, leading last Monday’s assembly once again and really driving our Year 9 Peer Support programme. It was a pleasure to induct Flynn Hayes (Lee House) into the prefect team on Monday.

As we know, sport and competition play a huge part in an all-boys school and with that the winter sports season is now in full swing. In any given week we have Rugby and Football teams playing in the South Canterbury competition, Basketball and Hockey teams playing in the Otago competition and other activities such as Trapshooting, Smallbore shooting, Golf and multisport activities. We have a large number of parents and friends of the school coaching/managing these teams without whom the boys could not participate. Thank you so very much. I know the boys are very grateful.

Congratulations to the Golf team of Carter Muldrew, Liam Page and Cory Holland on winning the Aoraki Champs last week.

We are all very excited about the opening on Monday 26th May of the new sports performance centre. It looks absolutely amazing and will be a huge asset to the school. A big thanks to old boy Matthew Wicks (Wicksey) who has done a superb job with the inside mural along with the team from Century painting.

I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank the Darcy Christopher Foundation who are extremely kind benefactors to the school. Darcy was an old boy of the school who attended in the 1920's.  Darcy left a substantial endowment to the school in his will along with a number of other organisations he was involved in. In the past 5 years monies from this endowment have been used to erect the new fence on the north boundary of Don Field and also contribute significantly to the laying of the new artificial turf and the refurbishment of one of the Don House amenities blocks. We hope to acknowledge the trustees of this Foundation at school in the near future.

Next week is a very busy one with many of our students sitting the Literacy and Numeracy assessments on Monday through Wednesday. We also have our Open Day on Wednesday 21st May starting at 11.45am in the Auditorium. If you have any friends with boys in Year 8 who may be considering Waitaki Boys’ for 2026 please encourage them to come along.

Lastly, thanks to the large number of boys and staff who have supported pink shirt today. Go to our facebook page to see some great photos. Thanks Mr Plunkett. We all stand against bullying and there is no place for it at our school.

Hoping the weather stays as it has been this week, and you have an enjoyable weekend.

He waka eke noa

Floreat Waitakia - We are Waitaki

Darryl Paterson

Rector

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