Welcome to Samoan Language week and the 60th anniversary of Samoa Independence.

It is full steam ahead with the office renovation getting underway next week.  The team has pulled together to move out of the office area and get set up in room five.  As per the Hero post that went out detailing how we will work, 'normal service' will continue.  The main change is dropping off and picking up students during the day. Please phone us when you arrive at school, 09 534-6543. We will then arrange to meet you by the gates between the hall and the Oasis room.

It seems we have got very efficient at planning for change, with lots of practice in the last few years!  Our strategic plan for the year is also carefully mapped out each year, using student data from the previous year to inform our focus areas and government priorities.  The Statement of National Education and Learning Priorities (NELP) sets the Government’s priorities for education that will ensure the success and wellbeing of all learners.  It was a long-overdue refresh of our national priorities.  After listening to the sector and looking at school data,  a more global set of priorities was set, (for example, well-being), which underpins students being ready to learn.

Unsurprisingly, our results dipped last year, like the rest of the primary schools across Aotearoa.  We measure our students against the expected curriculum level to see how effective our teaching has been in reading, writing and maths.  Historically we had a big gender gap between achievement in writing and boys.  In previous years we worked with experts and redesigned our writing programme to engage boys.  While our writing data has dropped to 73% at or above curriculum level after two years of covid interruptions, there is only a 2% difference in the gender breakdown, which is heartening to see.  Writing is the curriculum area that had the biggest drop.  It is the curriculum area that is hardest to teach online and we hypothesized that as parents, it would be the most challenging area to support from home.  Writing was the area chosen by the staff, to focus our professional development and target group teaching, with the goal of getting back to pre-covid levels of achievement.  One of the challenges is rolling Covid and absences, but that is out of our control.  We are focusing on what we can do.  I'll keep you posted on how we are going.