Year 11 student continues Karamū High School’s success in Scholarship History
Karamū High School student Nina Paljk has been awarded Scholarship in History as a Year 11.
Her result is just the latest in a successful run by Karamū High School which has seen 14 History Scholarships awarded over the last five years under the guidance of new Head of Social Sciences Tracy Taylor.
In the five years prior, 13 Geography Scholarships were awarded under previous Head of Social Sciences and ex-student Hannah Glenny.
Nina, now in Year 12, has had a successful four years at the school already, receiving the top academic prize each year for her respective year group since beginning in 2021.
“Honesty, I am really happy,” Nina says of her latest accolade. “I wasn’t expecting it at all particularly because it was my first year attempting a scholarship exam.”
But Mrs Taylor knew her student had the ability to succeed.
“To get it in Year 11 is super unusual. But I am not shocked because it was Nina. She's another one that I took special interest in when she was in my Year 9 class because she was a great writer and a great critical thinker. So, I knew that I wouldn't be pushing too much to get her to do scholarship.”
“Nina is a supersonic student. She works very hard but that’s just part of her whole work ethic and approach to life.”
New Zealand Scholarship is an award from NZQA that recognises top students and is assessed as a separate exam.
Nina follows in the footsteps of former Karamū High School Head Student Keelan Hesterman who achieved Scholarship History in Year 11 and 12. In his final year of high school in 2022, he was one of 20 people in the country to get Outstanding Scholarship.
This year, Nina was one point off achieving Outstanding Scholarship.
Last year’s Scholarship History paper was on communism. Students were required to write three essays using unfamiliar sources that spanned almost 200 years.
“Communism is such a multi-layered concept. It was really nice to do a deep dive and learn lots about it,” Nina says.
Nina says she wanted to attempt the scholarship exam as a way of improving her critical thinking and writing skills.
“There was no pressure which was wonderful. I just tried my best.”
Mrs Taylor adds: “That’s what I say, it doesn't matter whether you get scholarship or not, it's about improving your critical thinking and writing skills, and putting yourself in a challenging situation”.
Mrs Taylor has a long association with the school, beginning in 1991, and even taught current principal Dionne Thomas english.
“I believe in the school values. But mostly, I’ve always loved the types of students that come here.”
Over the years, Mrs Taylor has supported students from Year 11 -13 to take scholarship History.
“I respond to the students and the students have been very serious about doing scholarship for the last five years. They’ve been prepared to put in the mahi.”
She believes the saying “success breeds success” rings true.
“I did it periodically until five years ago when three people got scholarship that year, and two were at Year 11. And success breeds success because once students see that something like scholarship is attainable, then they're more interested in doing it.”
Unlike some schools, Scholarship History is taken as outside of class time, during lunch breaks and after school.
“We do it for about 20 weeks and I try to fit it around the student’s very busy lives.”
Caption: Karamū High School Head of Social Sciences Mrs Tracy Taylor with Year 12 student Nina Paljk who was awarded Scholarship in History.
