CONTINUING DIO’S RECORD OF high achievement

Leaving aside a wet and disruptive start to the academic year, 2023 is setting out to be the most ‘normal’ year since 2019. It is great not to be forever on tenterhooks that Microsoft Teams [UC] might need to be dusted off for online learning at any minute! In 2021, because of the significant disruption, NZQA awarded the Unexpected Event Grades (UEG). This meant that meant all students qualified for grades derived from their school exams. Dio girls took up that challenge and were well served, like all students in New Zealand, by that system.

2022 was another year of high achievement for Diocesan students across NCEA, Scholarship and International Baccalaureate, with a number of awards for outstanding and top scholars.

What is pleasing is that Diocesan results continue to place us as one of the highest performing schools in the country (the top schools are all girls’ schools) and every year more than 90% of Diocesan NCEA candidates have their certificates endorsed with Merit and Excellence.

Margaret van Meeuwen, Head of Senior School

2022 Examination results NCEA

Dio continued its delivery of excellent NCEA results, with high levels of Excellence and Merit endorsement across all levels and well above national averages. Pleasingly, 98% of Diocesan’s Level 3 students achieved University Entrance.

Scholarship

Students at Diocesan School for Girls have again gained exceptional results in

New Zealand’s Scholarship examinations, with joint NCEA dux Amie Cummack given an Outstanding Scholar Award for her overall results.

Amie achieved Scholarship in three subjects: English (2021), physics and chemistry – and two Outstanding results in biology and classical studies. She was also awarded a Top Achievers’ Scholarship for the University of Auckland. She is studying a conjoint

BA/BSc there this year. Amie was also presented the Board Scholarship of $5000 as the top Diocesan Scholarship student in 2022.

In total, Dio students were awarded 43 Scholarships in 2022, with five of those achieving an Outstanding result. The Scholarships were spread across faculties and reflected outstanding achievements across the broad spectrum of subjects. All six of Katherine Woods’ classical

“We are very proud of the continued success of our students. The results are a real reflection of the dedication of the staff, and the mahi of the girls, during three extraordinary years of challenge and disruption as they worked both online and within the school environment.

“The results also speak to the value of a single-sex education, with girls at single-sex schools achieving markedly higher results than equivalent students in co-educational schools.”

Heather McRae, Principal

studies students who sat the examination were awarded Scholarships, while the history department gained nine.

In addition, both the health and physical education students who entered gained Scholarships, along with all three of the food technology students. For the second year running, Toni Carter had three students awarded photography Scholarships.

Students studying Chinese, Spanish and Japanese also achieved Scholarship success.

International Baccalaureate Diploma

Diocesan achieved excellent results for the IB Diploma. Diocesan Top Scholar was IB Dux Erica Hu with 42 points out of a possible 45. She was also named a Top Scholar in New Zealand, where graduates must achieve a score of at least 40 points from their final exams. She is preparing to move to study at the University of California, San Diego in September where she will be studying human biology, planning a career in the medical field.

Scholars’ Awards

The function to honour the Scholars of 2022 was held in the Performing Arts Centre on 17 May. We have held this function in the theatre since we outgrew the Hall as a venue, and now with a more relaxed function of nibbles, speeches and presentations and coffee and dessert to finish, we can accommodate all the award winners and as many of their families who wish to attend. It seems a very long time since this event was held in the much smaller School House Dining Room!

Alexandra Graney the Academic Prefect for 2023 welcomed all the students and their families and spoke about the 2023 prefects’ focus of Bridging the Gap. This means connecting two things together or building a bridge to intertwine different aspects of our School that may not have been connected before, like our different year groups, councils and values. Alexandra also extended the metaphor to the bridge needed to navigate the ‘now’ (the last two years of high school) and the ‘next’ (probably a tertiary pathway). She identified that some gaps will require a small step while others will take a massive leap.

She said: “As we are standing on this rickety swing bridge between our present and future, all we need to do is look around us and we will find that there are other ways to cross this gorge, other options available to us. And if we find that the bridge we decided to make our way across when we first left school is not working out, it is never too late to turn around, walk back to the edge of the cliff and choose another way across. Nothing is ever set in stone.”

Alexandra’s message would have resonated with the guest speaker Sheryl Tan. When she left Dio, Sheryl went on to study Biomedical Science at the University of Auckland, and in 2015 graduated with a PhD for her work investigating the loss of the sense of smell in Parkinson’s disease. She then took up a position in Germany at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research. While the work and the lifestyle were exhilarating, Sheryl also had a watershed moment when she realised that while she loved the science and the extraordinary resources she could access, she missed working for a community and making her research count for something other than publications. She came home and has since worked on mechanisms for neuroprotection in spinal cord injury. By reducing the extent and spread of damage following an injury, it is possible to pave the way for other therapies to work better. Sheryl is also developing a model of concussion to understand the cellular changes after a knock to the head. She is on the team developing developing New Zealand’s first medical device for long-term implantation in the brain, which will significantly improve the management of paediatric hydrocephalus.

Sheryl finished by challenging the students to remember that a Dio education will leave them with a sense of duty; a calling to use their incredible education and their talents to help make this world a better place. She said: “This is how I define ‘Ut Serviamus’; it has been my guiding principle as I’ve navigated my way through my career. I challenge each and every one of you to define what ‘Ut Serviamus’ means to you and embody it as much as you can. You’ll always do your best work when you stick to your values unconditionally.”

SCHOLARS’ AWARDS

Year 11 Silver Scholars Awards are awarded to Level 1 NCEA students with a grade average of 90 or more across all subjects.

Sydney Bell

Danielle Callander

Alice Christie

Eva Cope

Jamie Cottrell

Lia David

Jessica Druskovich

Alexandra Fletcher

Harriet Fletcher

Amelia Frear

Alison Fu

Anno Fukutake

Zijun Gao

Rachael Griffiths

Anaïs Hamilton

Katherine Handley

Charlotte Hannah

Sophia Hardie

Harriet Hope

Vanessa Huang

Sophia Jackson

Sophie Jamison

Olivia Judd

Kanishka Kapadia

Lucy Kilgour

Indigo Kirk

Sheryl Lam

Gillian Le

Michelle Lee

Edith Li

Annika Lin

Amelia McIntosh

Elinor Millar

Rita Price

Olive Reynolds

Rohanna Sharma

Amy Shennan

Anya Stephan

Dora Sun

Sophie Tierney

Zara Tucker

May Wang

Hannah Wellington

Maya Willis

Danielle Wong

Zoe Wong

Imogen Worrall

Natasha Wu

Selina Yang

Catarina Young

Amanda Yu

Rose Yuan

Year 12 Silver Scholars Awards are awarded to Level 2 NCEA students with a grade average of 90 or more across all subjects.

Billie Frecker Netten

Year 12 Gilded Scholar Awards. Students receiving their second award receive a Gilded Scholar Award.

Annabelle Baigent

Arya Blacker

Lucy Blanchard

Christina Cai

Maisie Cavanagh

Lauren Chee

Charlotte Elliott

Nina Fisher

Isobel Fletcher

Danielle Foster

Alexandra Graney

Emma Herrick

Tessa Hickin

Rebecca Hounsell

Maia Hunter

Lucy Irwin

Sienna Kirk

Simonie Lam

Juliet Nasrabadi

Lucy Nevill

Aimee Schnuriger

Alice Sharpe

Sophie Shuttleworth

Samantha Smith

Margot Sullivan

Jenna Veal

Pascale Vincent

Alex Wackrow

Jessica Wang

Victoria Wright

Candice Yuan

Gold Awards

Unfortunately, none of the three Gold Award winners was able to attend the Scholar’s Awards function this year. They are:

Sunny Zhang

Erica Hu

Amie Cummack

Margaret van Meeuwen, Head of Senior School