Read the latest news from Rutherford College

Kia ora te whanau ō te Kōtuku

2027 Enrolments

This week has been Enrolment Week for Year 9 students for the start of the 2027 academic year. If you are out of zone please ensure that you have enrolled your young person by the ballot date, Wednesday September 2nd.  Even if a brother or sister already attends our school and we hit our out of zone quota, the roll will be closed. If there are siblings at Rutherford, to take advantage of that on the ballot, the young person will need to be enrolled by the ballot date.

There is a second reason for enrolling early. We start building the timetable this term and putting the respective pieces of this major jigsaw puzzle together. Those who enrol in a timely fashion provide information we can use to build a timetable with knowledge of what is needed. Those who enrol last minute might not have the same range of option choices available to them.  The process for enrolment is to complete our online enrolment form. Come along on Saturday morning between 9am and 11.30am to complete the process with an enrolment interview. Enrolments are held in our Information Commons/Library. Further interview times will be available from 17 August onward. These will be published on our website.

Na te whakairo, Ka ora te tangata, 

As we think so shall we become. 

When our thinking or attitude changes, everything around us changes.

A wise old person was sitting in the sun on a bench outside a school. Along came a young student who said “I have just shifted to this town.” Please could you tell me what this school is really like? The wise old person thought carefully, and after a moments silence replied, "Tell me about your previous school. What was that like?" The new young student didn’t hesitate. “It was pretty boring. Nothing much ever happened. The teachers weren’t any good. We’d just muck about most of the time. Nothing to do. Yeah, overall, just boring.” The wise old person said, “Well I think that’s pretty much what you will find here. 

A short time later another new young student came along and asked the wise old person, I have just shifted to this town. " Please could you tell me what this school is really like?”Again the wise old person paused, thought carefully and said, "Tell me about your previous school. What was that like?” The new young student did not hesitate. “It was great. Lots to do all the time, Great teachers. Good fun. Great friends. It was a really good place to be and I loved it. The wise old person replied, Well I think that’s pretty much what you will find here.

Parent/Student/Teacher Conferences - and Careers Expo - 13 August, 2pm onward

Bookings are going fast for Parent/Student/Teacher Conferences. There are a few slots left. Don't miss out. Book a time for your child's subject teachers now before the appointments are full.

Conference and Careers Expo Information

• School finishes at 1.20pm on the conference day to allow staff time to get set up for the meetings
• Log in to the School Portal to book a time to meet the teachers. Click on T3 PST Conferences to make a booking. If you can't click on the subject teacher you want to see, it means that teacher has been booked out for the entire evening.
• A coffee cart will be available on site from 1.30 to 4.30pm
  
• Teacher room allocations are available here
• The Careers Expo is in the School Hall from 2pm to 7pm. This is a perfect event for all ages and levels.

Course Selection Opens Next Week

It's almost time for students to start planning their learning pathway for 2027. Course selection begins next week, and from 10–14 August all students will attend assemblies to learn about the course selection process, NCEA requirements, and the importance of making informed decisions.

Choosing your subjects is an important step. The courses you select help us build the school timetable for next year, so it is essential that you take the time to consider your options carefully. While we always try to accommodate changes, it is not always possible to alter subject choices once the timetable has been constructed.

Before making your selections, we encourage students to seek advice from the people who know them and their goals best. Their subject teachers, tutor teacher, dean, and our Careers Team are all available to help you understand course requirements, future pathways, and the subjects that best suit your interests and aspirations.

Students are also encouraged to visit the Careers Expo, where they can explore a wide range of study and career opportunities to help inform their decisions.

To prepare for course selection students should:

• Browse the available courses within each learning area. The Learning Areas are viewable via SchoolBridge.
• Read the course information and guidance available on the Study Site.
• Discuss options with their family and the staff who can support them.
• Complete your course selections through SchoolBridge.

Key Dates

• Course Selection Opens: Wednesday 12 August
• Course Selection Closes: Friday 21 August

Taking the time now to make thoughtful, well-informed choices will help ensure you have the best possible programme for success in 2027.

Derived Grade Exams and CAA's

Coming up in Week 8 and 9 are the NCEA co-requisite Literacy/Numbers exams and the Derived Grade Exams.  On 11 and 14 September there is the second opportunity for students to sit their CAA exams.

As we head into the senior assessment season, the focus will be on derived grade exams. These are scheduled for 15-22 September.

What are Derived Grade Exams?

DGEs are school-run exams under NZQA-like conditions. They:

• Create a stored grade as a safety net for NCEA in November;
• Provide practice in exam conditions;
• Give feedback to focus revision.

This can be a very stressful time for students, not to mention parents. My advice is that plenty of sleep and preparation is the best antidote to exam stress. 

In my experience most students delude themselves that rereading their notes and highlighting them is effective revision. It is not. For students to retain information they must process it - perhaps into flash cards, quizzes and graphic organisers. The more they use the information, repurpose it, and test themselves, the better. It is also far more beneficial to start early and study in short bursts. It is actually important to allow yourself time to forget the information and then retrieve it again. This is like super glue for your long term memory. 

The other colossal mistake students mistake is to listen to music while they study. Many believe that listening to music aids their ability to study, but in reality, the music competes with the study material for attention. Learning is essentially a change in your long term memory and it requires us to get new information past our working memory and encoded into our long term memory in such a way that we can retrieve it. This process can be derailed very easily by overwhelming the limited space in our short term memory by extra sensory input in the form of music.

This concept has been extensively researched and the question of whether listening to music aids study has been answered. This is a summary of the findings:  

• Students who revised in quiet environments performed more than 60% better in an exam than their peers who revised while listening to music that had lyrics.
• Students who revised while listening to music without lyrics did better than those who had revised to music with lyrics.
• It made no difference if students revised listening to songs they liked or disliked. Both led to a reduction in their test performance.
• Students who revised in silence rated their environment as less distracting and accurately predicted that this would lead to better performances in subsequent tests.

Despite considerable evidence to the contrary, many students are convinced that they should have their phones with them and their music on while studying. 

I hope we can all work together to change their minds. Please see Rutherford College Study Site for more study tips, past papers and exemplars.

Ngā mihi nui, 

Gary moore