John Lewis

As Jackie Barron was commissioned as St Hilda's Collegiate School's new principal, she expressed delight there were connections with her old life and her new one.

Taieri College is bustling with life again after opening its doors last week, and plenty of time has been spent trying to work out how to fit more pupils into a school with fewer classrooms.

They say curiosity can kill a cat, but this one got lucky.

As many schools burst back into life this week, education reporter John Lewis and photographer Christine O'Connor went back to class. They sat at the back at Taieri Beach School, learning about a day in the life of sole-charge teacher Liz Bishop.

King's High School has gathered another bumper crop of year 9 pupils this year and the school's overall roll continues to rise.

Taggers and ''graffiti artists'' beware.

In the urban environment, a child struck by a vehicle travelling at 60kmh has only a 15% chance of survival.

''It's been embarrassingly successful,'' Brighton Gala Day organiser Colin Weatherall said at the conclusion of the public event yesterday.

Several surf life-savers were upset after a harrowing rescue in which a 14-year-old Dunedin girl nearly drowned at Brighton Beach yesterday.

It emits almost as much smoke as a house fire when it rumbles up the street.

The sun will not fry an egg on playground equipment at Arthur Burns Preschool, but it does get pretty hot.

The Portobello community has rallied to support a family left with nothing but the clothes they were wearing, after a fire gutted their home on Wednesday.

A large set of keys found in Highgate last week has left Dunedin police trying to unlock the mystery as to who owns them.

A French vacationer risked his life by running into a burning building at Harington Point yesterday to rescue as many of his family's belongings as possible.

There was a time in Middlemarch when locals reckoned you could kick a tussock and either a rabbit or a member of the Tisdall family would jump out.

The discovery of toxic mould growing in the walls of a classroom and another building at Bayfield High School in Dunedin has prompted the school to demolish and rebuild the facilities at a cost of $1.4 million.

What Tony Glassford should have told his fishing buddies was that he caught a 4m marlin which got away after it broke his rod and his boat.

Jake Cropley has no Celtic ancestry, but that is not stopping the 18-year-old from helping New Zealand forge stronger cultural links with Scotland.