A Message from the Rector

By Richard Hall | Posted: Thursday August 15, 2024

For senior students, particularly Year 13, these next 4 weeks are crucial.

Processes for 2025 have begun, enrolments for Year 9 are underway and strong, for the current Year 9 - 12 cohert the process for subject selection begins shortly and for our Year 13's the decisions about where they stand will need to be made.

For many of our Year 12's and 13's these decisions are difficult. For Year 12's, returning to school is the best decision. Sometimes we have young men who are desperate to leave, to get into the 'real world' and become tax payers, and that is okay if they have a strong plan backed up by actual qualifications, not if they are simply running from the reality of their current situation. For Year 13, they have no choice, they must move on, but to what and why are big questions that many are still grappling with.

I always start with the simplest question; Where will you be standing in 2025? If it is in a job or with a tertiary provider or even out of Dunedin, the clarity that that simple answer can give is quite powerful. As a whanau, you can then begin to narrow down through the circles, making the questions more and more specific. Each time, through open ended questions you are simply refining to help the thinking process. 

Many boys will reach straight for the career or job they think you want to hear: Health Sciences, Commerce, Building etc. They do that because they don't know and they are actually anxious about it. Tease that answer out by asking: What is that job actually like? How do you know? If you can, use the contacts that exist in a town like ours to help them find someone who has that career and can actually tell them about it in the day to day sense. Remind them you are not being critical but you are asking them to critique their answers, if only to solidify them or to make them whole, because as adults the decisions we know we have to make, have real consequences.

As always, Mr Andrew Swan, our Form Teachers and others are always ready to help with those conversations. There are excellent online career websites for New Zealand students that will help, so please feel free to ask.