Kia ora

You may have already read the following editorial which I wrote and is in the current edition of the Ellesmere Echo.

It has been a busy term so far at the College. Winter sports have kicked in and we are seeing the highest numbers ever of students (particularly junior students) getting involved in sport and physical activity. It is awesome to see students positively participating in such high numbers and we hope to maintain this over the coming years. Clubs and societies continue to grow from strength to strength and for a small rural school, we offer a huge range of activities to cater for nearly every interest. There is something on offer for everyone. Growing extra-curricular activities, despite the challenges we faced during lockdowns, has been one of the goals of the College and we continue to celebrate the amazing achievements of our students through social media and the Ellesmere Echo.

When I was appointed as the Principal over 5 years ago, there was a very strong mandate for change from the Board of Trustees. The Board at the time wanted to see huge changes happen quickly along with a defined “line in the sand” when it came to expectations and behaviour. However, rapid change in education is unsustainable and I counselled them for incremental sustainable changes over a period of time, based on data. In 2019, we carried out some in-depth internal research. This included me interviewing over 90 students about their educational experiences and how they like/dislike to learn, completing 40 lesson observations of staff, feedback from staff about their perceived level of self-efficacy to bring about change, feedback from the recent ERO review and a community consultation. From this information and extensive research on best practices from both New Zealand and around the world, we planned and have implemented some major changes in our learning design, particularly in the junior school:

Ako: Our Year 7-10 students spend 16 hours per week in a home-room type scenario in Ako with a team of teachers from different subject areas such as Science, Social Studies, Technology, Arts and Physical Education. Ako is an integrated, shared, culturally-responsive, extended whānau-like learning environment where students investigate concepts and ideas through project based learning. We have worked hard to shift the practice of teachers so that a culturally responsive pedagogy based on mana-enhancing relationships is implemented and for learning to be more visible to students - students understanding the why and how. This is supported by a huge international research base and the work of the likes of Emeritus Professor Russel Bishop and the University of Waikato’s Te Kotahitanga programme, neuroscientist Nathan Wallis, Professor John Hattie at Melbourne University.

Connected Learning Modules: One of the key principles which underpins the New Zealand Curriculum is the principle of coherence – that the curriculum offers all students a broad education that makes links within and across learning areas, provides for coherent transitions, and opens up pathways to further learning. Traditionally, high schools have been highly “siloed” with departments often working in isolation from each other with little to no coherence across the curriculum. Despite the revised NZ Curriculum being launched in 2007, over a decade and a half later the vast majority of high schools still continue to work in a traditionally siloed approach to the detriment of the education of our young people. Connected Learning Modules connect multiple ‘subjects’ to authentic ‘real-world’ contexts. Learning is co-designed with students to be powerful and transformational.

Some of you will have been to one of our Exhibition Evenings and experienced the amazing projects which our students have put on display, while students can also explain the learning process with their project being the outcome. We are seeing students becoming more creative, thinking more divergently and taking pride in, and ownership of, their learning. The quality of what students are producing continues to increase term-by-term. However, during this time, we also have had a number of teachers whose mindsets were fixed and could not adapt to new ways of working and many have moved on. We have been lucky to find young, dynamic, energetic and enthusiastic teachers to replace them who are continuing to grow and learn their craft.

Added to this, we have been working intensively with the RTLB service (Resource Teacher Learning & Behaviour) on Universal Design for Learning to design learning to meet the diverse and variable needs of all students in teacher’s classrooms. A foundation principle of The New Zealand Curriculum is inclusion: that no-one will be left out or discriminated against. That everyone will have access to learning in a way that works for them. As every student learns differently, schools must create flexible, barrier-free learning environments if all students are to become successful, lifelong learners. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) can help schools and kura design learning environments that are flexible, and where there are no barriers in the way. It is a framework that enables equitable access and participation in education. Classrooms are becoming more neurodiverse with increasing numbers of students with identified learning difficulties which teachers have to individually plan for with little to no financial support from the Ministry of Education.

Over the past few years, schools have also had to implement the Digital Technologies Curriculum, get ready to implement the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories Curriculum fully from next year, engage in the refresh of the New Zealand Curriculum (which will have major future consequences in terms of curriculum design) and get ready to implement redesigned NCEA. This is the background that teachers operate in on a daily basis. Teachers also have to support students with increasingly more complex needs with ever decreasing access to external support structures. It is no wonder that we are currently in the midst of the worst teacher supply crisis ever and highest levels of teacher burnout ever.

For us at the College, you then add in the fact that teaching and learning is still happening in temporary buildings - buildings which were moved on site temporarily in 1980 and we are still having to fight to get a permanent school built. We have spent thousands of hours over the past 4 years in discussion and meetings to plan and design our new school in order to amplify the change already implemented in our learning design. We have planned an amazing new school with a 380 seat auditorium, gym with weights room and a whare which will all become community assets. The learning hubs have been designed as a mix of traditional classrooms and flexible learning spaces in order to be responsive to the needs of all students. The landscaping design will see nearly 12,000 native plants being planted with the hope of becoming a Te Ara Kakariki Green Dot. We want our new school to be a beacon of what education currently is and what it can be in the future. It is not a complex build, on a green field site with easy access and from day one was always planned to be an 18 month build. The detailed design has been signed off and we are down to the level of picking colours! It is already to go…however, towards the end of last year it was mentioned that potentially there may need to be a longer staged approach to the build due to increasing costs. For us this was devastating news. We have had multiple meetings with the Ministry of Education and a multi-staged approach is the only approach which is being considered. For the Board of Trustees this is unacceptable. Currently there is an estimated shortfall of approximately $30M in the rebuild budget with the expectation of this money being made available during successive annual government budgets over the next 4 years - however there is no guarantee of this happening. The initial cost of the rebuild effectively has doubled. The funds which were announced in 2019 are still available for the rebuild but will not cover the cost of building all of the learning spaces. Finding an extra $10M would see 95% of the new learning spaces being built immediately but there doesn’t seem to be the impetus within the Ministry to try to find this on our behalf. It particularly was a kick in the guts when the Prime Minister announced funding for 300 new classrooms only days after we were told that we would not be moving into a fully-completed redeveloped school until 2028 at the earliest. It feels that we are just some small rural country school who has been overlooked for four decades and that our community and staff are expected to put up with buildings which are barely water-tight and buildings which we have not been allowed to spend money on over the past 5 years. This has been a long and frustrating process, even more so when we see the 26 brand new classrooms which are being built down the road at Ashburton College which will be ready to move into in November. The last five years have worn down staff to the point of exhaustion. We have amazing young people who attend our kura and they deserve the best, just like other young people across the country. It is unfair that the young people of our community have been effectively overlooked for 40 years. The teaching staff and Board of Trustees will continue to advocate and fight for what our community and young people deserve, but it is also now time for our community to start backing our young people, the people who support and teach them every day and our local college. I ask that you make your voice heard in any way possible that you can. Write emails to whoever will listen including elected officials such as the local MP, Councillors, Ministry of Education, Minister for Education, Prime Minister. Post on their social media pages. Make as much noise as you can! You can find a list of email addresses on the “Redevelopment” page of our school website. It is time to make noise, stand up and be heard. The Board of Trustees is in the process of organising a public meeting in the near future…so watch this space.

I thank you in advance for your continued support of your local college in what are exceptional and trying times.

Ronan Bass

Principal/Tumuaki