Scholarship success thrills WHS

Wanganui High School scholarship winners - Toby Brooke at rear and Sarah Tastard and Dinuka Perera at front. PHOTO/STUART MUNRO

Wanganui High School students have achieved a record number of scholarships this year with 16 students awarded scholarships ranging from $3000 to $50,000.

Principal Garry Olver said it is an historical record for a decile 5 school to have so many awardees.

Some students were awarded more than one scholarship - Dinuka Perera was awarded the University of Otago Academic Excellence scholarship as well as a University of Auckland scholarship. Dinuka has chosen to study medicine at Auckland University next year with a $50,000 scholarship.

Toby Brooke received scholarships from Massey and Victoria universities as well as a University of Academy of Sport scholarship and Sarah Tastard received awards from Massey and Victoria universities.

Sarah recently won the inaugural NZ Moving Words Literary Translation Prize for Spanish, a competition entered by the entire Y13 Spanish class.

She translated three poems written by Dr Leonel Alvarado, a Honduran poet, who now lives and works in Palmerston North and is Senior Lecturer in Spanish at Massey University.

"I chose his poems because they were interesting and cleverly written" said Sarah.

"It was difficult to translate them in some ways, but very enjoyable trying to convey the meaning in English."

Sarah will also receive a special prize from the Spanish Embassy at a ceremony at Victoria University in Wellington in December. Mr Olver said the Y13 awards ceremony last Wednesday was a wonderful occasion and students behaved impeccably afterwards.

Last year some students caused a lot of damage at the school after the ceremony so parents were sent letters asking them to encourage good behaviour this year and the school hired extra security.

"There was not a single event this year - we did hear about one planned 'prank' but it was a suggestion made in jest and nothing came of it.

"These pranks are happening around the country and the practice seems to have been fed through social media from overseas but these are a great bunch of kids and we had no trouble."

The other winners are Jenni Barrett, Daniel Corrigan, Maegan Dykstra, Tobias Green, Zoe Groves, Laura Hughes, Nubeerah Khan, Catriona Mellows, Max Munneke, Alice Murphy, Emily Ross, Craig Thomas and Michelle Xie.