Auckland's Carmel College says on its website that the school will be using online learning from Tuesday 5 - Friday 8 July.

Schools in New Zealand are on holiday from 9 July.

Amid battling Covid, influenza, RSV, tummy bugs and staff having to care for ill family members, the NZ Herald reported, Sunday, schools are 'just hanging on' till the end of term.

University of Otago epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker is again urging New Zealanders to brace for the second Omicron wave as the community case average increased by almost 50 per cent in nine days.

Baker described the 49 per cent increase of the seven-day rolling average of cases on June 25 (4737) to Monday 4 July (7046) as an "abrupt rise."

Baker is warning that New Zealand could be at the beginning of another Omicron infection wave.

"It's a dynamic; a battle between us and the virus and there are factors mainly favouring the virus at the moment," Baker said.

On Monday, health officials reported 6498 community cases, and 487 hospitalisations. The weekly rolling average of hospitalisations has increased from 335 this time last week to 420 today.

While some schools have gone back to compulsory wearing of masks, last week, the Government only encouraged mask wearing for year 4 students and above.

A mandate for wearing masks in schools was removed in mid-April, just before the end of the first school term.

On June 30, the Government made changes to reinfection advice, saying anyone who experienced symptions 29 days or longer after a previous infection must test and isolate if they return a positive result.

"Moving back to red is unnecessary at the moment. We can continue to manage the virus at orange, but are putting in place a range of additional measures to help manage a recent rise in cases," Covid Response Minister Dr Ayesa Verrall said.

Sources

• Carmel College
• NZ Herald
• NZ Herald
• Stuff

A vigil of remembrance was held at Carmel College Hall in Milford on Sunday, November 19th. Her Requiem Mass was celebrated at St Joseph's Church the next day.

Engel was a teacher at Carmel College from 1965 to 1983. She taught history, English, geography and religious studies.

She was principal of the College from 1983 until 1991.

After retiring as principal, Engel served for some years as Auckland's Bishop Patrick Dunn's vicar for education, with a particular interest in seeing that Catholic schools, integrated into the State system, remained committed to their special character.

In 1995, she was made a Dame for her services to education.

In her time as principal, she had a sticker above her door which said: "Girls can do anything".

"Pauline was passionate about the education of girls and young women, with a commitment that earned public recognition in honours conferred by the State," said Denis Horton.

"She rejoiced to see former pupils progressing in their careers, especially when they made a difference to other people's lives.

She believed in mercy and its care for the poor and for the environment."

Engel worked with Horton when he was was the editor of Auckland's diocesan weekly, Zealandia.

Current Carmel College principal Chris Allen, who has been involved with the school as a student, parent and teacher, said Engel had been a part of every step.

"She taught me here, she was the one who offered me a job and appointed me as a teacher and then was very good at making me believe I could become the principal here," Allen said.

"She mentored me into this position."

Allen has fond memories of Engel, who she described as feisty and determined.

"She was very passionate about the education of women and was a very learned women herself."

Source

• Stuff
• The Sisters of Mercy
• New Zealand Herald
• Image: Stuff

Editor Simon Wilson wrote that academic results are critically important, but the best measure of a school is its character.

"In the sense that it takes a village to raise a child, good schools actively foster a community of home and school where each supports the other and they share each others' values."

Wilson cites Catholic schools as "the shining example".

"Pretty much every Catholic school in Auckland is doing remarkably well academically", he notes.

"One big reason is the ready-built home/school relationship they have through the church.

"It provides a set of shared values and an active commitment to each other."

Wilson writes that secular schools can achieve these things too and many do.

"But often it doesn't come so easily to them."

In considering the schools' academic performance, Metro grouped them in decile rankings or noted they were private.

Two Mercy schools, Carmel College on the North Shore and McAuley High School in Otahuhu, were singled out for praise.

Decile 10 Carmel was described as "outstanding", with special note taken that "almost nobody left school without at least [NCEA] level 2".

Decile one McAuley was labelled "a phenomenon", with three quarters of school leavers having level 3 NCEA qualifications.

"There's another pattern in these results. Most of the outstanding schools are Catholic," Wilson wrote.

The article stated there was no one reason for this, before citing the same deduction as its editorial - strong school/family/church ties make a difference.

Elsewhere in Metro, a columnist noted the editor's belief that their annual school edition is the monthly magazine's best selling one for the year.

Source

• Metro
• Image: stuff.co.nz

For me, she was an excellent teacher: she encouraged me to read widely, gave me ample time for creative writing, drilled me in mental arithmetic, and allowed me leadership opportunities, which largely consisted in time out of afternoon lessons to clean up the staff room!

Within her classroom, students were streamed rigidly, based on the arithmetic scores at the beginning of each term, and then allocated a seat beginning at the front of the right hand row - top boy, top girl, second boy and girl behind them and so on - and snaking up and down the classroom with "the tail" in the left-hand row, nearest the door and furthest away from the teacher's desk.

At the back of that row, in 30th place, sat Andrew.

We were the children of the working class, without role models of continuing education, but among us Andrew stood out.

Today he would have been diagnosed with one or more learning difficulties, and a social worker, counsellor and school nurse would have worked to address family and social-economic issues. Then, he was largely left to his own devices, struggling to decipher baby readers when the rest of us had moved on to chapter books.

That was streaming at its worst, and I often wonder what became of Andrew, but for me and many others streaming worked.

It was a possible corollary of the Catholic belief that competition in education would enable Catholic children to rise to the same status as their Protestant counterparts - an important factor in overcoming the religious discrimination that permeated our society. I suspect that same belief lay at the root of traditional schooling structures in Catholic New Zealand, beginning with the children of immigrants, fostering excellence in brighter students by allowing them the opportunity to interact and compete with others of like ability.

But what about the Andrews of today, when unskilled job opportunities have shrunk almost to vanishing point, and NCEA Level 2 is being touted as the benchmark everyone needs to achieve in order to make a meaningful contribution to economic society?

Can we honestly say that we are honouring not just the core competencies of the New Zealand curriculum but the core values of our Catholic schools while we continue traditional streaming practices, perhaps not as rigorously as Mrs W. but certainly prompting some students to see themselves as "the cabbage class", as was mentioned in a recent Dominion Post article.

Justice, Respect and Compassion, as well as National Administrative Guideline 1, all demand that we provide every student in Years 1-10 with opportunities to achieve, identify students who are at risk of not achieving and develop and implement strategies to address their needs.

Sometimes, in the senior school, streaming - or the less rigid "banding" - enables us to do just that, for example when we can group Maths students who struggle with algebra, provide them with an experienced and skilful teacher, and cover a course more slowly; or when, in the junior school we are able to maximise the effectiveness of an experienced teacher aide or mentor by clustering students around her.

However, recent research in both the UK and New Zealand would indicate we need to take another look at how we place students in classes.

• Perhaps all traditional practices have achieved is to make life easier for teachers, since a more homogeneous classroom cuts down the need for differentiated teaching strategies.
• Perhaps the move to more digital classrooms offers the opportunity for students who have struggled with academic content to experience more immediate and engaging feedback, which John Hattie tells has the largest effect on student achievement.
• Perhaps students are always going to measure themselves against others, rather than against their own previous best efforts, no matter what structures we employ.

We know that intelligence is not fixed, that the brain can make new connections every minute of every day with the right stimuli, so some hard questions need to be asked about why we do what we do - and one answer that's not allowed is "because we've always done it."

Kathleen Deady is Principal of Carmel College, Auckland.