Tena koutou katoa
Warm greetings and welcome to you all for this new College year.  I would especially like to welcome students and whanau new to the College family in 2013.  It is our pleasure to have you all as part of our community and we are looking forward to working with you as part of the Verdon family and discovering your special gifts and talents as you share these with us through your participation in the College

What a wonderful beginning that we have had to the year.  We began with our Powhiri to welcome our new teachers and our new year 7 students to the College.  This is a special day for the College and It is always wonderful to see our year 13 students working with our new year 7 students throughout their first day at the College.  On Friday we celebrated the opening of the College year with a whole school Mass at St Theresa’s. Our Opening Mass is a special occasion and is a wonderful expression of who we are as a Catholic community.  The opening mass is an opportunity to express our faith as a school community and ask for God’s blessing and guidance as we undertake new challenges this year. I would like to thank the priests of the Invercargill parishes and surrounding areas for your attendance and helping us in the celebration of this special occasion. 

It is my pleasure to share that our students  again had a very successful year in terms of their achievement in NCEA qualifications.  88% of our  students in year 11 achieved NCEA level 1.  80 % of our students in Year 12 achieved NCEA Level 2 and 71% of our students in Year 13 achieved NCEA Level 3.  These results surpass our outstanding results from last year. Particularly pleasing is an increase in the number of Excellence Endorsements achieved by students. These results are a credit to both the students and staff of the College.

I am looking forward to another extremely positive and successful year for the College.

God Bless
Jarlath Kelly