Tēnā koutou katoa and warm greetings to all Parents and Caregivers,
As our academic year comes to a close, we want to acknowledge and thank parents and caregivers for their support of our students and School this year. The engagement of our parent community continues to be strong, and the aligned messages that we give and model for our young people – that hard work must precede progress and success – are appreciated. We look forward to celebrating our Year 9 and 10 students with many of you at our Junior Prizegiving, on Tuesday 9 December (at 10am).
Te Tiriti o Waitangi
Recently, the School has received correspondence from a number of alumnae and some parents requesting that we join collective action protesting government changes in the Education and Training Amendment Act 2025. We have responded to these members of our community, and want to reassure our community that the removal of an explicit obligation on School Boards to give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi — in order to meet the new paramount objective of educational achievement and seek equitable outcomes for Māori students — has had, and will have, no material impact on our School or community.
The School Board governs through Policy. In August, before changes to the Act were passed in November, our Board approved our Te Tiriti o Waitangi Policy. We did this in line with Te Tiriti principles of partnership, protection, and participation. We invite any member of our community wanting to know the Board’s position to read this Policy, which is publicly available on our School website.
Epsom Girls Grammar School has always taken girls’ education seriously and our School has been on a journey, as a proudly diverse state school, to ensure that all groups — and especially tangata whenua — have equal access to, and outcomes from, a robust and rigorous academic curriculum. We remain committed to leading in girls’ education for our Māori wahine and for all our students.
School Board Strategic Planning
The School recently surveyed its community (students, parents, and staff) to consult prior to Board strategic planning. Members of our community can always send correspondence to the Board to share their thoughts or experiences but these surveys enabled us to capture a snapshot of opinions from those able to respond within the timeframe.
We have shared a summary of responses with our staff and students and want to share with you some of the trends and messages that came through:
- There is significantly more alignment between the experiences of students, parents, and staff, in academic, pastoral, and co-curricular opportunity offerings – and these experiences are predominantly positive;
- There is now uniformly positive experiences of how Epsom Girls Grammar School upholds high expectations of students’ attendance, uniform, and behaviour;
- Two themes consistently ranked in the top three when groups were asked how the School could best improve personal standards of excellence for our students – these were: more consistency of teaching within subjects; and, more tutorials/study groups offered.
The School Board, Senior Leadership Team, and representatives from the EGGS Foundation and OGA will now meet to create a new three-year strategic plan, using the survey responses as well as a wealth of achievement and wellbeing data collected by the School. This will be in place for the beginning of 2026.
Looking forward to 2026
We wish all of our families and students a wonderful summer break, joyful Christmas celebrations, and a happy New Year. Some dates for your diaries though, are:
- Wednesday 21 – Thursday 22 January
Course confirmation days (10am – 3pm): Year 12 and 13 students only
- Thursday 29 January
First day of school for all year levels:
9am - Year 9, new students, and Year 13 student leaders
10.30am - Years 10 to 13
- Friday 30 January
First day of normal school timetabled classes
The shape of the day for students in 2026 will be as follows:
Our School leadership and subject experts have spent a lot of time this year working on new or adjusted programmes of study that make the most of every minute of every lesson. These programmes aim to support, challenge, and extend our students’ thinking and understanding in their chosen subjects for 2026. We look forward to engaging with our students and their parents and caregivers as we introduce these programmes which prepare our girls for success in the New Zealand curriculum content and to also excel in international curricula.
Per Angusta, Ad Augusta,
Mrs B McNaughton
Principal
