Principal's message...

Our Mission: To prepare students to be active participants who will contribute to their community.

This week I had the privilege of joining our students at the North Otago Fiefia night, an important celebration of talent, and culture, and a reminder of what a fabulous community we live in. The guest speaker, Uatesoni Filikitonga from WBHS, spoke about his journey so far in life and reminded us all of having high expectations and not settling for less. He also spoke about surrounding yourself with the right people, the people that inspire you, uplift you, share the same values as you, and most importantly for me, the people that you can have fun with. I only had to look up and across to see that I was surrounded by the staff, students, and whanau of OIS, they are the reason why OIS is the best place to be, it is a privilege to be the Tumaki of Oamaru Intermediate.

Thank you to everyone who has helped make this term such a success, whether you have supported a sporting team, academic adventure, or event, or donated items for our raffle. We are grateful for our community support.

As we head into the holiday break it is a timely reminder to be aware of what your child is doing, especially online. It is important that we take an active role in our children’s online presence, and take notice of who they are talking to and friending online. Have another conversation about the importance of not giving out personal information and sharing passwords. We also strongly discourage students from joining big group chats, where more than five students are involved. We know that our students are engaging online, and I believe the best approach is to educate students and as parents, ensure that we have measures in place to keep our children safe.

At O.I.S. each child signs a Digital Citizenship Student and Parent Agreement on their enrolment, which gives them their own log-in. While they are logged into their O.I.S account, all activity is logged and tracked by the O.I.S filtering system. During the holidays, students are welcome to log-in and complete work and tasks they may want to get done, however, we do encourage students to use their personal log-in for all other activities during the holiday break.

Last Friday we celebrated a number of students for their sporting success, it was awesome that we could have three ex-pupils from WBHS and WGHS join us; Mya Nicol, Ben O'Sullivan and Lochie Mavor.

I wish you all a very safe and happy holiday.

Rebecca Meek, Tumuaki