Tena koutou ngā whānau, ngā mihi nui ki a koutou katoa,

We had a fantastic Lego House of Bricks Day today! Problem solving, trouble shooting and creativity on display. Great to see our students working collaboratively to achieve the goals of each session. Lots of learning and fun.

We are seeing the usual winter illnesses beginning to increase. Sore throats, vomiting and headaches have been doing the rounds, along with COVID. It is important to carefully assess when you send your child to school. It is a balancing act - trying to ensure they don’t miss too much school, but also support our community by not spreading illnesses. Thank you to those who use the EDGE app to notify us straight away when your child is away. This is a tremendous help to the office.

School attendance has been very topical within the media of late. The government has been busy introducing new initiatives, aimed at improving attendance rates. In April 2024, the Government announced a regular attendance target of 80 percent of students to be present for more than 90% of the term by 2030. Below is a description of each attendance category and Broadfields Term one attendance rates. 

Comparing attendance at Broadfield School for Term one in 2023 and in 2024, we did see a noticeable difference.

Term 1 2023: 81% of students attended more than 90% of the term.

Term 1 2024: 71% of students attended more than 90% of the term.

Nationally: 53% of students attended more than 90% of the term.

Although sickness contributed to 46% of absences, we saw the largest increase in families taking holidays (up to 32%) during the term time as one of the major contributors. This is mainly due to Easter falling in term time this year.

The school monitors attendance daily and we will inform you via email if your child’s attendance is falling below acceptable levels.

EDUCA Reporting: As we outlined in term one, this year we are trialling reporting to parents in a different format. Our intent is to provide timely snapshots of your child's achievement every term via EDUCA. This will be instead of the middle and end of year written reports. You will still receive the same amount of reporting for Literacy and Numeracy (twice yearly) but spread out across the year. Our aim is to make curriculum reporting reflect current work and progress across all subject areas.

This term your child will receive an EDUCA post of their mathematics learning and a post on their Science work and learning throughout the term. These will follow the same format as your child’s Literacy and New Zealand Histories post from the end of Term 1.

These posts are your child’s new overviews on progress and next steps, therefore include a curriculum level that your child is working on. These replace our formal school reports that were sent out in Term 2 and Term 4.

These reports are designed so that you get an overview of your child’s learning journey, their strengths and next steps with a focus on a different curriculum area each term.

As teachers we love to see your comments and thoughts on these reports and also the student’s own voice. You are able to add any comments underneath each post.

These posts remain on your child’s profile and as they are added to will show a continued learning journey for your child for each curriculum area.

Parent Community Service: A little cheeky I know. We are looking for parents who would not mind helping us out with a few odd jobs around the school. As you may know, Broadfield School does not have a caretaker and most jobs are taken care of by the staff and students. Many hands make light work. If you are able to help us out by ticking off any of the following tasks, we would really appreciate it:

• Trim back the hedges along the school's front fence.

• Trim back the flaxes around the school pathways.

• General tidy of some gardens.

• Trim back (slightly bigger) trees around school.

• Dig a small channel for the telephone poles to lay in around the climbing logs at the end of the junior block. Drill through the poles to fasten down to the ground.

• We need a builder who could come and explore options for strengthening/reinventing the adventure playground tower.

• We are looking to put a soak pit and grate into the entrance way of the school to help with surface flooding. 

Rotary Primary School Quiz Night: Well done Emma Karon and Sammy Thomas. These two general knowledge whizzes managed to secure 7th spot out of 20 Primary Schools. It was a fantastic result considering how close the competition was at the top of the table with only six points covering the top 10 teams. Our parents watching in the crowd managed to achieve the same score as our team.

Exciting Staff News: Broadfield School is thrilled to share the joyous news that Shane and Kate Rose are expecting their third child! We are all very excited for them as they embark on this wonderful new chapter in their lives. Shane and Kate, your growing family brings so much happiness to all of us, and we can't wait to meet the newest little Rose at the end of the year. 

Ka kite anō

Jarrad Welsh
Principal