Deputy Principal of Achievement

In what was a challenging 2020, it was wonderful to see that Ōtūmoetai College students achieved excellent NCEA results. These results show that our students are comfortably above the national averages in the six key indicators. This is highlighted in the graph below which compares our data with the National figures.

Our Level 1, 2, 3 and UE results were in fact the best they have been in the last five years. The Year 11 students achieved exceptional results in NCEA Level 1, with their pass rate of 82.3% being 11.4 percentage points more than the national average. We are confident that we can raise this figure even further in 2021 by responding to student needs and offering more personalised courses.

The recent appointment of Matua Bobby Ketu to the role of Kaitiaki, will benefit our achievement rates as it will enable improved focus on our Māori achievement which will in turn increase our overall school results across all three NCEA levels.

In the Junior School, writing will once again be a key focus with the Social Science and English Departments taking the lead. The Writing Tool includes planning, sentence and paragraph structures, writing under pressure, editing and publishing. In addition, the use of SOLO (Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes) will develop further the way we classify learning to help students move from surface to deep learning.

Ōtūmoetai College continues to work with the New Zealand Council of Educational Research (NZCER), the home of research-based thinking about effective assessment practice, to build an assessment capable system where the use of the evidence we gather is driven by the decisions we want to make to improve teaching and learning.

We look forward to partnering with you to achieve the best possible results for our students.

Mr Stephen Tisch Deputy Principal