School Principal Donald MacLean
PRINCIPAL’S ANNUAL REPORT TO PRIZEGIVING – 2009
Chairman and Trustees, Bishop Paterson, Former Trustees, Friends, Parents, Staff and Boys of Dilworth School
Having presented a number of these reports over the last 13 years, and as we reach the end of the first decade of the 21st century (or is that next year?) I feel emboldened to move my usual excuse about lack of detail in this report from somewhere near the end, right up to the very first paragraph, and to say that the events of 2009 will be recorded in great detail in the Dilworthian, which will be published hopefully by the end of Term One next year. And so you will understand that I don’t have to go into too much detail or too many specifics during this evening.
However, one of the reasons you can never dust off an old speech for Prizegiving is that things are never the same from year to year in any institution or any family, and despite appearances, the same is very much the case at Dilworth.
2009 has certainly been a year of development and change (as usual, not all of it is as quick as some would like, but at our school and in our Community, care and consideration are essential to good long term decision making). On the other hand, it could be said that some progress has been made with great rapidity, unexpectedly and with a force that is likely to bring future benefits to Dilworth boys much more quickly than was originally anticipated. Let me give two specific examples of development and change.
First, since our Boarding Review in Term One, we have moved steadily in our progress to implement the main challenges and recommendations of that report, that is the appointment of more staff in our boarding houses at Dilworth. While the report was overwhelmingly positive about the work we do, it did identify some areas where extra staffing would be useful and the Board were willing to give their immediate support to that, despite the fact that the costs were not included in the current budget year, and for this I am most grateful. Most specifically, I am talking about an extra Assistant Housemaster in each boarding house at Senior Campus and the appointment of an additional Academic Tutor in each boarding house at Senior and Junior Campus. Please note that these changes are giving a balanced level of support and attention to academic and pastoral care needs at our school.
The extent to which House staff have been willing to respond to the challenges of change has been truly heartening and the implementation over the next few months of these changes will obviously be under constant review. In the meantime, appointments to these positions are about to be announced. In addition to that, the appointment of a second part-time Guidance Counsellor to enhance the guidance counselling and pastoral care opportunities at the school and to continue to improve our relationship with parents whose boys may be having difficulties, is one of the other recommendations in the report that was able to be accomplished at the end of Term Three when Ms Jensen returned from sabbatical and Mrs Vakaruru was willing to continue her work at Dilworth. I also note the great importance of the appointment from the beginning of this year of Ms Nathan as our Year 13 and Leavers’ Dean. The work that she has done in monitoring leavers and how they are progressing after life at Dilworth has been of great value and the feedback she has received will become part of our ongoing improvement process in helping in the transition of students from Dilworth to the real world.
The stronger and stronger pastoral care emphasis that has been built on our great tradition at Dilworth of care for individual students, should be truly heartening to all parents and boys. Mr Williams, the Head of Pastoral Care, has been highly responsive to student and parent feedback and we hope that this level of feedback from you all will continue well into the future.
The second example I give is the opportunity provided by the unexpected potential sale of the site and buildings which were formerly occupied and owned by The Hotel du Vin Conference Centre. This particular matter obviously brought one of our longer term strategic goals from the back burner to the big wok! A great deal of hard work was done behind the scenes, over a relatively short period of time, to investigate the possibilities and suitability of the site for a rural campus for Dilworth. You all know the result and we expect the next 24 months to be an exciting time of forward thinking and development as we prepare to open this new facility. Most important of all, is that it will give a good number of young men a chance to have the Dilworth opportunity which is currently not available to them because both our campuses at present are full. (Not Dilworth du Vin or Hotel MacLean – Rural Campus)
A number of other projects relating to the two current Dilworth campuses are still also under consideration and have not been forgotten in the excitement of the planning process for a rural campus.
As the Chairman has indicated, there was a review from our Inspectors at the Education Review Office at the beginning of this term and the verbal report on that visit was upbeat and contained no negatives or surprises. The published report has just arrived and is very positive. Such a visit adds a huge amount of extra work load to the programme of already busy Heads of Department and teachers, and I am very grateful to them all for the thoroughness with which they prepared for this very important visit and the lack of disruption to school programmes that was able to be achieved during this process. It is, of course, vital that we get a “big tick” from the ERO so that we can get on with the future rather than having to deal with the past.
As far as new curriculum is concerned, in terms of the preparation for the implementing of the new National Curriculum and the making of curriculum choice broader at Dilworth , this has also been a busy year. I believe our curriculum handbook which was sent to Secondary boys’ parents earlier on can stand proudly beside that of any other large boys’ secondary school, and the wide range of options and flexibility for Senior students in particular that become available in the next year or three, will be of considerable benefit to all. I am grateful to Mr Bushell and his team for their hard work in this area ( I am also pleased to know that academic mentoring, for Year 9 initially, will be a feature of one of our developments next year, which again helps to put boarding, pastoral and academic care on a equal footing). I would also like to say that I applaud the strong push to increase the inter-campus development work that is currently under way in curriculum delivery which makes a great deal of sense when most of our Year 9 students have already experienced at least two years at Dilworth Junior Campus.
Mr Firth has already mentioned to you the outstanding achievements of our students in NCEA at Levels 1, 2 and 3, and I also add to that the increased number of Merit and Excellence awards that are being gained by our students. This, of course, is the outcome of the hard work of the students and the professional and talented teaching of our staff in classrooms. I simply note for now, especially for our parents, when I am told that a boy at Dilworth is receiving a good education, is receiving an education that is likely to open the doors for him to the future in ways that might not happen in other schools, that that statement is absolutely correct and true. You may well know that I am very cynical about anything that smacks of the league table in assessing schools and then publishing their results in the public press in a very narrow range of school activity. However, I am prepared to concede that since the Metro magazine discovered that in our academic achievement we were third from the top out of 77 secondary schools in Auckland, we will take that as a compliment and be grateful for it and hope that in the next year or two we can be first out of 77.
Sport, Music and other cultural activity continues to flourish at Dilworth and the range of choice and the successes of our students in so many areas is a very good reason for my initial statement – “that it’s all in the Dilworthian” – mentioning one or two areas makes others feel left out, therefore from year to year I do try to concentrate on something that is new, developing or different. Tonight I want to mention the increased emphasis on the teaching of the Theory of Music, as opposed to simply the teaching of instrumental skills, and also the work being done in composition. First, the aim of the Music Department, and Mrs Sue Armstrong in particular, has been to raise the standard of achievement in the Theory of Music, quite separate from instrumental instruction. This provides a stronger, formal and internationally recognised basis for our students through the Associate Board of Royal Schools of Music. This year, around 30 students fronted for the Grade 5 Theory of Music exam (a voluntary exam in itself and one that had to be sat in their own time) and the results are an astounding story in themselves. There were 4 Passes, there were 11 Passes with Merit and 14 students passed Grade 5 Theory with Distinction. This is a very significant and new development at Dilworth and I want to congratulate all the boys who have been successful to such a considerable extent, as well as Mrs Armstrong for her great efforts in this area. We will be hearing from Jodan Au and Jefferson Chen, Year 11 and Year 13 respectively, who have just discovered that they have both achieved Grade 8 in Piano, Jefferson with Distinction with 130 marks, and Jordan with Merit and 120 marks.
Additionally, the significant increase in competition for the Sievwright Cup in Composition saw 11 strong entries from our most talented musicians, all worthy of success and recognition in their own right and with a Year 13 Survivor, Michael Collier, winning the competition with his composition “A Tribute to Beethoven” – certainly one of the most outstanding pieces of music I have ever heard from the creative mind of a school student.
For those of you who were at the Carol Service, there will be little doubt in your minds about the strength of choral singing at Dilworth, under Mrs Caldwell, with a choir of over 90 on our Senior Campus and over 40 on the Junior Campus.
Dilworth is a place that cares, that guides, that guards and that develops. In connection with our Duty of Care, I want to have an interlude now before I finish my report to recognise a very special member of our Community, Dr Tom Marshall, who has completed, as of today, 40 years as Chief Medical Officer for Dilworth School.
In 1970, Dr Tom Marshall was appointed to this position in terms of the Dilworth Will, which required that all boys be of sound bodily and mental health prior to being admitted to the School. The only way to ensure this, of course, was by a pre-enrolment full medical. Over these years, Dr Marshall has visited the School twice a week and has been available for all kinds of emergencies and advice. Often, as a result of the thoroughness of his work during medicals at enrolment times and subsequent consultations, boys’ health problems have been discovered and dealt with that were previously unknown by students or their parents. Dr Marshall is an honoured member of the medical profession across a wide range of medically related organisations and associations. The Board and I honour him on your behalf tonight for his thoroughness, his high sense of professionalism and his amazing ability to be totally up to date with the latest research despite being involved in such a busy professional life.
Forty years is certainly an amazing period of dedication and commitment to one role and it is appropriate that we mark this milestone tonight.
In a moment, I am going to ask Mr Derek Firth, the Chairman of the Board, to make a presentation to Dr Marshall and, at the same time this is happening, Ethan Au, the Head Prefect, will make a presentation to Mrs Marshall. The presentation to Dr Marshall is a very exquisitely carved greenstone artefact which represents, among other things, the value of care and guardianship and we hope that both Dr Marshall and Lorraine Marshall will enjoy this piece of visual art in the future and that it will remind them of our gratitude for many years of care and guardianship at Dilworth.
Dilworth is a unique institution. It is an institution that cares, and it’s an institution that cares, because it’s all about people. Let me mention one or two things about our Dilworth people.
I acknowledge first of all, once again as I did yesterday at the Junior Campus Prizegiving, our great appreciation of and our great respect for Mr Rex Hooton as the recently retired Head of the Junior Campus. To have someone of Mr Hooton’s standing in our community and someone with such commitment to the ideals of Dilworth, decide to leave his position is certainly a major event for us. I express my own professional and personal gratitude to Rex Hooton for his amazing contribution to the life of the Junior Campus and therefore of the whole school over such a significant period of time. I salute him for his amazing loyalty to me and to the Board and to what we are trying to do here and, in particular, I acknowledge his intense interest in the welfare of every single student who has passed through the Junior Campus in the last 15 years. The tributes by students at both campuses during Mr Hooton’s final week at Dilworth were a testament in themselves to the esteem and respect and love which he has been and will continue to be held in the years to come by Dilworth boys who become Dilworth Old Boys. We are sure that the more relaxed lifestyle which he and Jan Hooton have chosen over the next few years will not mean that his interest in us will not wane in any sense of the term. We look forward to carrying on our strong connections with him. I want to express my appreciation and thanks to Mr Smith and Mr Procter and the rest of the team at the Junior Campus for assisting in making a transition to a new era of leadership so smooth and lacking in disruption for the safe and good running of the school, thus ensuring that Dilworth ideal that the interests of the boys always come first. Our congratulations to Mr Vos, again, on winning this position and the very best of good fortune to him as he gets into his stride as Head of Campus.
I acknowledge briefly this evening once again the presence of Bishop John Paterson on the stage. Bishop John retires as Bishop of Auckland and therefore as our Episcopal Visitor, on 31 March, and I invite you to join us on Founder’s weekend, in particulate at our Chapel Services at both campuses on Sunday, 14 March, where we will farewell Bishop John in the appropriate context for his 15 years guidance, advice, colleagueship, consultative excellence and warm special interest in our school. Bishop John’s Annual Report to the Board is that, it’s an annual report to the Board not to the school, and while I am very reluctant to allow myself to speak on behalf of the Bishop, one of the things I feel comfortable about quoting to you from the Bishop is his pleasure over the years at the development in Chaplaincy and RE teaching at Dilworth and his great joy and pleasure at being able to preside at Confirmations over the last three or four years – events which have indicated an increasing commitment on the part of our boys to their own faith and to acknowledging that within the Anglican context of our school.
I also acknowledge tonight our respect for Mr Steve Alpe, who has been Head of English at Dilworth over the last 7 years and is retiring from his position. We thank him also for his deep interest in boys and for his contribution not only in the classroom but in the sport of Hockey in particular and hope that his change in lifestyle is a positive one for him. I also pause quietly at this time for us to remember once again the late Kerry Douglas, who was Kitchen Supervisor here for over 11 years, who passed away earlier this year after a very long and very courageous battle with cancer.
In this year, 2009, we have welcomed Mr James Hannah, formerly from Attitude, Parents Inc, and a great deal of experience teaching at Hamilton Boys’ High School, to the RE specialist position at Dilworth and also Mr Stuart Selby to the position of PE and Sport Specialist at the Junior Campus. We also welcome Mr Grant Truman as Sports Manager in the PE Department following Ms Nathan’s transfer to the Head of Health and Year 14/ Leavers’ Dean position and we have also had the privilege of welcoming Ngaire Vakaruru first of all as a reliever for Ms Jensen in Term 3 and subsequently as a second Counsellor within the Pastoral Care team. As many of you will already know, Mr Kerry Weightman is relinquishing the Housemastering part of his work at Dilworth at the end of Term One and he has been replaced by Mr Grant Truman, who will work together with Mr Weightman and the Tyrone House team to ensure a smooth transition of management in that area for the first 8 weeks of 2010.
We’re a school that cares, and I’m somebody who has personally and professionally benefited from that care and the uniqueness of that care that one gets in this Community. I want to express my deep appreciation to the Board and in particular to Mr Reid and the rest of my management team, for their outstanding assistance and support this year when I have had a couple of spells of bad health, and their willingness to allow me to slow down a little bit on a couple of occasions in order to regain my health. I also want to say a special thank you to many of you boys who have come to me personally to express your concern about how I am and when I’m going to be back, and that’s probably the thing from 2009 that has been more special to me than anything else that has happened in recent times.
In thanking all the staff and in thanking the staff in every possible area of the school, I have to finish my thanks to the staff by mentioning my gatekeeper and guardian and the person who has to calmly cope with my foibles and eccentricities, Jenny Reeves, who is the PA par excellence! To all of our staff at Dilworth, thank you for your continued willingness to move forward, to be challenged and to be committed to this continuing, complex and fascinating journey that is Dilworth.
I have mentioned on a number of occasions that it is a privilege to be part of Dilworth – it’s a privilege to work here, it’s an enormous responsibility, but also a great privilege to carry responsibility in this Community. However, that privilege is something that works both ways. In my time here and in the time of all of my colleagues on the staff, we have had the privilege ourselves of knowing the boys who are leaving this year – not only piano players, sportsmen, leaders, singers, cultural experts, academically outstanding but also simply good, great brothers and friends. And to you, the young men I’ve been describing just now, where to from here?
I challenge you to consider that no matter how variable your experience here has been, that the benefit to you is greater than you can be expected to realise at the moment, yet, and that in the future I trust you will find your own very particular and personal way to acknowledge this benefit. Whether you are in this country or somewhere else in the world, wherever you are making your way in life, I ask that you will think on this place, and remember that whatever you thought at the time, we really cared for you, we really wanted what was best for you, and had faith in you that you would indeed prove to be the good and useful citizens that James and Isobella Dilworth hoped you would be. There is a sense in which this place will always be your place and while we don’t want you turning up and interrupting lessons every five minutes, you know that there is always a warm welcome for you here. You have been given a privilege and with that now comes the real responsibility of making the most of the privilege that you have been given.
This evening I want to give you a very startling example of how a good impression created by just one Dilworth Old Boy can make a huge difference to a large number of people. Some time ago, a lady in Tauranga, called Earlien Wright, met a Dilworth Old Boy who was the child of a friend of her family’s. Three or four years ago, Eirlien Wright, having no family of her own and having been so impressed by this one Dilworth Old Boy, by his manners, his work ethic, his attitude to life, his courtesy, his good and useful citizenship, decided to leave her entire cash estate to assist Dilworth Old Boys in their lives after leaving school. She named this trust in honour of her mother, Mrs Ella Burford and from now on the Ella Burford Trust will figure in our programme of assistance to Old Boys as they leave school to try to make their way in the world. This will be an additional form of assistance over and above the tertiary support that is already provided by the Trust Board.
The reason I say this is a startling example that one person can have on a greater number is that the impression created by this one Dilworth Old Boy has resulted in a trust that contains nearly $1.2 million being left to fund extra study, other expenses that leavers may have (including accommodation), possible assistance with setting up in business and other requests that may come to us from Old Boys who are in particular need. The details of the criteria for applying for a grant from the Ella Burford Trust will be published early next year on the School website and on the Dilworth Old Boys’ website and the first awards from this trust will be made at Founder’s Day on 12 March 2010. So, once again, I ask you to seriously consider how you are going to represent yourself and your school after you have left and, indeed, when you are not in school while you are still here. One person, and we do not even know his name, made the right kind of impression which has brought over a million dollars of aid directed to current students who are leaving school.
Think about it.
Thank you as this year comes to an end, to the Trust Board for their continuing support for the school and for their wisdom and foresight as we look to the future. I want to acknowledge the newly found strength of the Dilworth Old Boys’ Association and their Council, lead by Adam Hiron and thank them for their increased interest in the work of the school over the last year. I want to particularly acknowledge the generosity and care and kindness of the Old Boys’ Centennial Foundation Trust which is chaired by Mr John Simpson. We are deeply grateful for the funds that are available to boys at the school to assist with a number of activities which are not directly funded by us, including the many successful berths that we have had on the Spirit of New Zealand, and the other assistance that has been given to groups within the school to achieve their goals. The Dilworth Friendship Club has again provided a very, very strong network of support for parents and for the school under the exceptional leadership of Adrienne Wilson who, I am very sorry to say, is stepping down from her position as President after this year. I want to say that Adrienne has been an inspirational President, she’s been very understanding of the life of the school, and her leadership of the DFC as President, has given a considerable lift to this organisation. I acknowledge a particular strength, which has been the ability to gather a strong team around her, thus ensuring a good succession plan for the time which has now come for Adrienne, to step back from this responsibility. Today, we thank her very much, along with her DFC team for their great support and input to our school.
So, if I have missed a vital point, my apologies. If you are sure it will not be covered anywhere in the Dilworthian, flick me an email and I will include it here – prior to handing this speech to Mr Artus, whose deadline for copy I have already breached!
As we come to the end of the year and look forward to the beginning of another and for whatever lies ahead, I quote from the poet, Louise Haskins (1875 – 1957):
I said to the man
Who stood at the gate of the year,
‘Give me a light that I may tread safely
into the unknown.’
And he replied,
‘Go out into the darkness
and put your hand into the hand of God.
That shall be to you
better than light
and safer than a known way!’
So I went forth
and finding the Hand of God,
trod gladly into the night.
A happy and safe Christmas and New Year to you all.
Donald MacLean
PRINCIPAL
