Wednesday, December 9, 2015




Dear Parents, Caregivers and Friends of St Mary’s School,

Well as this is the penultimate newsletter for the year, it is a good time to focus on the amazingly

supportive environment that we share at our school.

Last night I had the privilege to attend the monthly P.T.A. meeting, the B.O.T. meeting and then a

combined Christmas function. It was a very pleasant evening and an excellent way to bring two groups who do so much to support our school together.

While the roles of the two groups are quite different, both groups perform their jobs to the highest

possible standard. To produce the excellent efforts that both groups produce doesn’t happen just by chance, it happens by very astute and motivated people working very hard.

Our recent excellent National Standards results are due to the close link between home and school and the huge level of support that the school receives from our parents but especially from the PTA and BOT.

Our National Standards results for 2015 show, that 81.8% of our pupils are achieving at or above the

national standard for writing while that national average is 71.1% so we are achieving 10.7% better that the national average in writing. 89.2% of our pupils are achieving at or above the national standard in

reading, that is 11.2% higher than the national average and 82.6% of our pupils are achieving at or above the standard in mathematics and that is a 7.4% higher than the national average.

While these results are excellent, I feel the key point is that our percentage of pupils achieving at or above the national standard in all areas shows continued improvement.

The next week promises to be very busy with functions on almost everyday. So please as I have said,

remember the true meaning of Christmas and take any chance that you can to relax and have some down time.

Have a great week,

Mike Brosnahan




Dear Parents, Caregivers and Friends of St Mary’s School,

What an ever changing world we live in! I was talking to my Year Eight R.E. class recently about my wife's Grandfather. He was a World War One veteran who lived until he was over a hundred years old.

When he was born Dunedin had little street lights, a "night soil" man was still common, no cars, no planes, no telephones and obviously things such as T.V., computers, space travel, and the internet were only true in science fiction novels.

When he died he had seen a man walk on the moon, flown many times, held a drivers licence until into his nineties, loved to watch T.V. and understood all about computers.

A century is a long time. In his life time Charles saw changes that as a young man he could never have conceived.

If we looked at the massive changes in technology Charles saw in his lifetime, what changes will we see in ours? What changes will our children see?

While waiting for the birth of our son (in 1998) we purchased an early model cell phone. You could only make calls on it, no texts nothing else just use it as a portable telephone. The battery was far larger than the total size of most modern phones. Look at your cell phone, what functions can it perform?

These changes have happened in less than 20 years!

Have a great week,

Mike Brosnahan