Today was St Heliers School End of Year Achievement Assembly. St Heliers is a primary and intermediate school catering for children up to year 8 (13 years of age). We chose the school on the basis of a meeting with the spectacularly impressive Craig McCarthney who had recently joined. St Heliers is a decile 6 school.  The decile rating indicates the extent to which the the school draws its students from from low socio-economic communities. Set Heliers school’s ‘zone’ (the area from which the school guarantees a place for residents) extends in Glendowie and St Heliers (both upmarket suburbs with a largely white New Zealand population) and Glen Innes (a less affluent suburb with a mixed community of largely Pacific Islanders and Maoris). The decile rating is used to target state funding to help schools overcome barriers to learning that students from lower socio-economic communities might face with decile 1 attracting the higher funding per pupil and decile 10 attracting lower funding per pupil.

In recent years St Heliers school has failed to fill the school role with in-zone pupils (a sign that local parents have preferred to send their children to ‘better’ school rather than the local school. Craig is charged with driving the the performance of the school forward. A more impressive headmaster than Crag McCartney would be an impressive headmaster indeed. I estimate that amongst the over 30 nationalities make up the 450 pupils at the school.

Anyway, today is the annual school prize giving, a serious which for St Heliers school is a really serious affair with school staff dressed their best attire and by my estimation around 500 pupils and parents in attendance.

Trophies are given out for various achievements including Sport Excellence, Academic Excellence, Maths Award (trophy plus $1000 prize), Citizenship Award, Creative Arts, and Student of the Year etc. All the trophies /prizes seem to be sponsored by businesses or private individuals. Student of the year was awarded to Shelley Woo (a Chinese student) whose parents were required to go up on stage to receive the award with her (in tears) – she also won the Maths award. Several members of the audience are also in tears.

No prizes for ‘newbies’ (as they call new people in NZ) Ellie and Cari but an impressive experience none the less rounded-off with a rendition of the New Zealand national anthem (it’s a strange thing to sing the national anthem of a foreign country as an expat).