Staffing for 2025:

Generally, Western Heights doesn't have many staff changes. We work very hard to find and employ the best possible staff and equally hard to do all we can to look after and keep them.

Our staff are what make our school great. Sadly, we are losing two of our wonderful teachers and one of our wonderful support staff.

Teacher Rebekah King is moving to Hamilton to be closer to family. The added bonus for her family is housing is more affordable there. Rebekah goes with our blessing and will be greatly missed. She was snapped up immediately by a principal I know well and is joining an excellent school.

Teacher Kelley Head has been with Western Heights for 15 years. She took a leadership role in numeracy, which has led to a new career of supporting schools in implementing the new Mathematics curriculum with PR1ME Maths. Again, Kelley will be greatly missed, but this is an awesome opportunity for her, and we know she will be brilliant in her new role. 

Support Staff member Emerald Webb is sadly leaving us for a particularly good reason. Emerald already has a double degree and has gained a full scholarship to undertake a Teacher Training course next year. Emerald is a born teacher, so we are very hopeful there will be an opening in our teaching team for her in the near future.

I know well from colleagues how difficult it is to find teachers now. Most of those applying are either beginning or overseas teachers. However, thanks to our school's outstanding reputation, we have been able to attract high-quality applicants.

Next year, we welcome new teachers, Ailish McAllister and Liz Clarkson, to our Year One team. Both left permanent positions at local schools to join us. Both are highly experienced, high-quality teachers, and we are very fortunate to have them join us.

Our school is growing every year; our predicted roll for 2025 is 734 children. Therefore, we will employ a third new teacher for 2025 to cover our growing roll.

That teacher is Nick Vemoa. A few years ago, Nick was a trainee teacher on a teaching practicum at Western Heights with Rebekah King in room 21. Nick made a huge impression on our senior students - particularly in room 21 - and on our senior school team. Put simply, we all loved Nick and would have loved to have given him a position, but we didn't have any vacancies. 

Nick joined Prospect School instead and very quickly went from being a Beginning Teacher to being promoted to Team Leader of a Year 3, 4, and 5 teaching team. Nick was also responsible for ICT in the senior school and was set to be a Within School Community of Learning Leader in 2025 at Prospect. He gave all that away to join our team at Western Heights. This is excellent proof that the way we value, nurture, support, and look after our staff makes us an attractive option for quality teachers.

I will share photos of our new teachers soon. In the meantime, here is a full list of teachers and classrooms for 2025.