Neve Keightley with the hoe (paddle) she won for coming top in her year 13 te reo class.
Cambridge High School’s runner-up to dux is excited about diving into a total immersion Māori language programme, Te Tohu Paetahi, at the University of Waikato next year.
Seventeen-year-old Neve Keightley is hoping to emerge from the one-year course fluent in te reo.
“I think the language itself is really beautiful, and poetic, and I also feel like, as a New Zealander it’s my responsibility to learn it and to be able to speak it,” she said.
“And I’d like to use it in my job as well. I have been thinking for a long time that I wanted to do something in the health sector. I’m not 100 per cent sure if I will. But mainly I just want to be able to help and give back to the community, and especially Māori people, and if I was to do something medical, then being able to reassure them in their language I think would be really helpful.”
Neve moved to Cambridge with her parents and younger sister in 2017, just before she started in year 7 at Cambridge Middle School.
Last Tuesday (October 31) the year 13 student received Cambridge High School’s proxime accessit award after topping mathematics with statistics, biology, history and te reo Māori.
She said it was “really special” to be on the stage with her long-time friend and dux Anna Jago.
“When we were at Middle School, Anna and I were the only two year 7 students in the whole school to get Principal’s Awards, and I remember neither of us were expecting it… I feel like that was our first prizegiving together and this was our last, and it was really nice to come full circle and just to be standing next to her again. I think she fully deserves it. She’s always been such a hard worker and got amazing grades, so it was really cool.”
Like Anna, she was moved when the school kapa haka, Te Piringa Maaori o Tauiwi, performed a haka in their honour.
“My sister, Sylvie, and Anna’s sister, Madeleine, were right next to each other in the middle of the girls and I think it was really special for both me and Anna watching them,” she said.
“They were really giving it everything and we were really proud to see them being proud of us.”
Kapa haka will be part of Neve’s university programme – something she is really looking forward to.
“It’s going to be sad for me to not be in the school rōopuu any more, since I’ve been doing that since I was five,” she said.
Neve said rather than shooting for dux, her focus through high school had been on “just doing my best and making sure that I was always proud of the efforts that I put in and the grades that I got”.
She was a Te Koo Utu house captain last year, a house prefect this year, co-chair of this year’s academic committee and a member of the Te Hunga Taikaakaa Māori leadership group, which ran the 2023 Cambridge Combined Schools’ Kapa Haka Festival.
A keen netball player, she made the school’s premiere reserve team in 2022 but played socially this year because of a clash with kapa haka practices. She has also played lacrosse socially.
Next year she will continue working part-time at a Leamington fish ‘n’ chip shop and as a retail assistant at Comins Pharmacy, while enjoying having time to weigh up her future career options.
Her advice to other students: “Make the most of your opportunities…hard work is very important if you want to succeed.”
“My family has always been very supportive and encouraged me to do my best, which has definitely been a great help, and all the teachers are also really encouraging and supportive,” she said.
“They encourage you to ask questions and they genuinely want the best results for us students.”
Now, she is looking forward to next year.
“It’s sad to leave our friends and the people…but at the same time as it’s a bit sad, it’s definitely more exciting,” she said.
“Sometimes it can feel overwhelming because it’s been 13 years of your life, which is a long time – almost my whole life – but then you still have your whole life ahead of you.
“Finishing school and knowing that you’ve given it your best in everything you’ve done is a really good feeling.”
Neve Keightley
