Pānui (News)

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou, (Warmest of greetings to you all) Getting in to you all one day earlier than usual with the Friday pānui, with tomorrow being Waitangi Day. Just another reminder that school is closed for instruction this coming Monday 9th February for a Staff Only Day, hopefully giving you all a four day weekend! We will be hosting Newbury and Tokomaru kaiako (teachers) for a day of maths learning with Dr. Jo Knox from The Learner First.  Hopefully Wednesday 18th February from 5.30pm is on your wātaka (calendar) as we will be hosting an information evening to keep you...

Ngā mihi nui o te tau hou Pākehā e te whānau (Happy New Year everyone), Nau mai hoki mai ki a koutou (Welcome back everyone). We had our usual mihi whakatau yesterday to embrace our new whānau members to the kura. As always, it was nice to set the tone for the year with this process and ‘live and breathe’ our uara (values) of whanaungatanga (relationships) and manaakitanga (kindness) by doing this important ceremony in Te Ao Māori (The Māori World). We welcomed six new rangatahi (students) to our whānau as Tia, Ollie, Kevin, Honor, Henry and Ariyan all joined Anna in...

Ka nui te mihi mahana kia koutou, (Very warm greetings to you all) This will be the final pānui I write to you all for 2025, coming at you nice and early, as I know it’s going to be an incredibly busy day! Today marks the end of my fourth year as your tumuaki (principal) here at Turitea and I still wake up excited to come to school every single day. Steve Jobs once said "The only way to do great work is to love what you do" and I feel lucky to have that here. Our kura has a wonderful...

Tēnā koutou katoa, Yesterday's annual Turitea tradition, the PTA Pool Party/Water Fight, was a huge amount of fun, as seen below. Before I could join in on the action though, I had the rather large, yet enjoyable task of reading every single End of Year report for our ākonga (students). I appreciated the window they gave me into the learning journey each child has been on in class and how they are progressing toward achieving their academic goals. The student voice sections were certainly a highlight and made me laugh out loud one minute, then feel deeply touched the next!...

Tēnā koutou katoa, What a crazy week of weather we’ve had, but luckily the sun was shining on Tuesday for the Interschool Athletics competition at the Massey Track. Ayla, Blake, Elisa, Finn, Harriet, Henry, Ihaia, Ivor, Jackson, Kazuri, Kyerin, Mackenzie, Munroe, Riley, Rory and Ruby represented our kura and the competition bar was raised for them with 22 local schools taking part. We have some very ‘bouncy’ kids, with Ayla and Ihaia both coming 2nd= in Year 5 High Jump. Ayla also came 2nd in Year 5 Girls 100m Sprint and Kazuri came 3rd in Year 6 Girls Long Jump....

Kia ora e te whānau,  We have some exciting news to share for Cameron and his wife Olivia, who are expecting a baby in May 2026. He let his class know last week and now our school hāpori (community) today. We look forward to meeting ‘Baby Schaw’ and know you’ll join us in celebrating with them. Get your sleep in now Cameron… We realise that there are not many parking spaces outside our kura, hence why we encourage a staged pick up at either 3pm or 3.15pm, or at the later time of 3.30pm on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Our yellow lined carparks directly...

Tēnā koutou katoa (Hello everyone) Ka nui te mihi ki a koutou (Thank you for your support) for our dear Trish over the past week. The love and messages have flown in for her and have all been passed on after the passing of her beloved husband, Patrick. A lot of you have asked what you can do to support her in this difficult time and I will be working with the PTA on some ideas that have been floating around which we will share with you all soon. Trish and her whānau held a private service for Patrick yesterday...

Tēnā koutou katoa (Hello everyone) I hope you will share in my excitement that Turitea School has finally gone live on Facebook! We are one of the last schools left in Palmerston North not yet in this realm, and that was a deliberate choice. Although we have a website, we realise people won’t go there unless they are actively seeking information. Establishing a social media presence will act as a modern day 'shop window' to promote and showcase the unique character of our kura. We will share timely updates, successes, reminders, keep our wider community informed and broaden our reach...

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou, (Warmest greetings to you all) You may have heard on the news on Tuesday that the Government has made a decision to remove the requirement for Boards of Trustees to give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi (The Treaty of Waitangi). While this may prompt some mixed responses across our motu (country), this was another tough blow to hear as we pride ourselves at Turitea School on the gains we have made in our cultural competency and commitment. Our four teams had an awesome day at the Fitzherbert Cluster Touch Tournament at Monrad Park...

Kia ora e te whānau o te kura nei, (Greetings families of our school) Apologies for the early Hero post this morning informing you that school was still open for business today. There were some misleading posts doing the rounds on social media about some schools being closed because of the fire at the old Fitz building last night. I’m lucky to be well-connected to ‘the goings on’ at other schools in Palmy, so I made the call that if schools closer to town were open for business, then there was no risk to us if we did the same....