Kia ora Parents and Caregivers,

It was a very exciting week for our school, with several significant events and activities taking place.

Firstly, I’d like to thank all of our families that have signed up to TaxGift, or donated to our Event Centre since we sent the email a week ago. We are incredibly grateful for your generosity. If you haven’t looked into TaxGift, please do take some time to have a read: HERE It’s a very simple system where you gift your tax rebate on donations you make to Westlake Girls through TaxGift – a group of experts who do all the work for you when you sign up. Collectively, your rebate could make a huge difference to us reaching our goal of becoming debt-free on our Event Centre.

On Wednesday we held our first-ever “Building Her Future – Women in Trades” event. It was an outstanding success, with a range of speakers across various trades, including employers, training providers and female apprentices. Thank you to everyone who attended – I hope you enjoyed the evening, were inspired by our speakers and workshops, and took away some valuable information. Our Careers Department did an outstanding job of organising this event, and I’m sure it will become an annual event on the Westlake calendar.

Also this week, our Westlake Schools choirs won several awards at the Auckland Regional Big Sing competition. We have a long tradition of success with music, and are looking forward to hearing if Cantare and Choralation have now made it through to the national finale. The 2020 event was cancelled, but in 2019 all of the combined Westlake school choirs won Gold at the finals in Dunedin.

There have also been some inspiring student-run events over the past couple of weeks – but I will leave them to tell their own stories within this newsletter.

Jane Stanley
Principal