The North Otago school produced two new Members of the New Zealand Order of Merit — Richard Kennett and Sandy Pasley.
Mrs Pasley said the honour was a "huge surprise".
"I am really grateful for all the huge number of the people who have supported me throughout my career."
She could not remember whether the two were in the same year at school but did remember Mr Kennett and his brother.
Mrs Pasley lived on a farm and went to school on "one of those old-fashioned buses that had the red and yellow, a typical country school bus".
"I had four siblings so five of us in our family and we all used to catch the bus.
"I had a great education at Duntroon Primary School."
She received the honour for services to education.
One of her first teaching jobs was at Waitaki Girls’ High School.
Mrs Pasley has 20 years’ experience as a principal including a stint as assistant and deputy principal at Birkenhead College when the Auckland school was named the 1999 secondary school of the year.
She retired at the end of 2025 as principal of Baradene College of the Sacred Heart, a role she held since 2011.
Under her leadership, Baradene saw a significant improvement across all results, and is now within the top 10 schools in New Zealand, with close to 100% achievement in NCEA.
Throughout her career, Mrs Pasley volunteered her time to various boards and advisory panels, including the Auckland Secondary Schools Principals’ Association, Teacher Registration Panel, Victoria University of Wellington masters of secondary school leadership advisory board and the Ministry of Education Professional Learning and Development Panel.
She was also the first female elected as president of the Secondary Principals’ Association of New Zealand and was made a life member in 2017.
Mrs Pasley now works full time for the Ministry of Education to further support principals.
Mr Kennett, a Glenorchy resident, has spent the past 50 years contributing to conservation projects around the Wakatipu Basin.
He has also had a long-standing involvement in Land Search and Rescue (LandSAR), Mr Kennett and received the honour for services to conservation and search and rescue.
Since the mid-1970s, Mr Kennett has held conservation roles, latterly as a principal ranger for heritage and visitor assets with the Department of Conservation, undertaking urgent repair and preservation work above and beyond his paid duties at damaged heritage and recreational sites.
He played a crucial role in the preservation of the Arrowtown Chinese Settlement, the Whakaari Scheelite mining assets, near Glenorchy, the Kawarau Suspension Bridge,which became the birthplace of commercial bungy jumping, Macetown, Skippers, Bullendale and the Kawarau Mining Centre.
Mr Kennett also had a significant role in the protection and management of Te Koroka special area, near Glenorchy, in partnership with mana whenua.
Mr Kennett was also a key driver of the management of the Routeburn Great Walk, Rees-Dart and Greenstone Caples Tracks before they were declared tracks of national significance and had also managed several Wakatipu walking track developments and initiatives.
Additionally, he had a lengthy involvement with LandSAR, including being the Wakatipu LandSAR committee chairman from 2011 to 2017.
He was the senior non-police representative on the search and rescue incident management team in the Wakatipu Basin, through which he had contributed to numerous significant search and recovery field operations.
Those included being incident controller for the catastrophic Blue Duck aircraft crash in August 1989, in the Dart Valley. In that crash the pilot and nine passengers, on a scenic flight from Wanaka to Milford Sound, were all killed.
