Te Puke High School's top students recognised

Former Te Puke high School student Jas 'Ofamo'oni was the guest speaker at the school's senior prizegiving.

Te Puke High School's 2020 Senior Prizegiving was a little different this year as we come to terms with the impact of Covid-19.

For us it meant no nibbles before or after the ceremony.

Once we got past that, it quickly became an evening of celebration enjoyed by students and their families, guests and members of the community as well as staff. Head girl Maia Rahurahu and head boy Navjot Singh did a marvellous job of hosting the night and keeping proceedings flowing.

The kapa haka group opened the evening before a welcome from board of trustees chairman Andy Wichers and the presentation of the service awards by mayor Garry Webber.

These awards give staff the opportunity to recognise our students who have completed some extraordinary service.

The major service award winners were Paul Taylor who won the Dr John Mark Memorial Cup and Kim Kaur, winner of our premier award, the Rotary Cup, for her voluntary work, particularly with the Cultural Committee, AIM High Reading Programme and the International Department.

Duncan Bentley won the Patu Manaaki Award, gifted to the school by the Year 13s of 2018, for his exemplary guardianship.

This was followed by the academic awards for the three senior year levels to recognise the best student in each of the subjects.

Also recognised were the high academic achievers and students who had already earned an excellence endorsement.

High academic achievement is for those who may not have been the best in a subject but have consistently excelled in a number of subjects. An excellence endorsement is earned once a student has earned over 50 excellence credits. It was exciting to see the haka being performed to acknowledge the success of some of our Māori students.

As well as the academics and service awards we were also entertained with some impressive student performances.

The kapa haka group also closed the ceremony.

We also had some of our Pasifika students performing a Tongan dance and singing a Fijian song.

Both items complimented our guest speaker Jas 'Ofamo'oni.

Jas is completing her doctorate studies in dance at Auckland University.

She was particularly impressed by the way her Tongan heritage, and Pasifika culture, is supported at school and the changes that have taken place since she left.

Later in the evening principal Alan Liddle announced the 2021 student leaders and awarded the top prizes to some of our students.

Head girl for 2021 is Ellen Emmerson and head boy is Giovanni Rai.

These positions were eagerly competed for with over 60 applications for the eight student leader roles.

Scholarships supporting students with their tertiary plans were awarded to the total value of over $112,000.

These are supporting students at Waikato University, Otago University, Victoria University and WINTEC.

The ultimate prizes came last when we were made aware of the Proxime Accessit and Dux awards. These are won by students who have been committed to their studies at school and in particular 2020. The Proxime Accessit is Levi Nicholson and the Dux is Patricia Pislor.

The senior prizegiving was an enjoyable evening for those present where we had the opportunity to acknowledge the academic excellence, service, cultural diversity and student leaders of 2020 in a formal setting with the community.

Many of our students have worked extremely hard to excel in different areas.

We look forward to doing it again next year, where we celebrate a new group of students' efforts and achievements.