The Board of Trustees meet monthly, but we are also meeting regularly outside of this in sub-committees. The sub-committees focus on specific areas including Finance, Health & Safety, Communication, Curriculum and Property. The Board of Trustees will update the school community on what we are up to regularly, here is an update from the Curriculum sub-committee.

The Curriculum sub-committee met with Rob Naysmith and Cathie Zelas in February to discuss 4 reports relating to the 2019 year.

The Enrichment Programmes report was discussed with detailed explanations about how the programmes are used, including the process for identifying and selecting the right programme for the right children. Overall, the results showed that most programmes were seeing students improving to meet School Expectation or accelerating towards School Expectations. The Halswell School Expectations were developed following the disestablishment of the National Standards in 2018, and reflect where we would expect most children to be achieving in reading, writing and mathematics after one, two and three years at school and at the end of Years 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. 

Although there are many programmes available to our students, there are good processes in place, that ensure that when one initiative isn’t working for an individual, they can be moved quickly into a programme that may be better suited to their current needs.

The report on our Student Wellbeing Target showed results and commentary that we have seen throughout 2019. The students were surveyed using standard questions to gauge their sense of wellbeing, the results show little change since the last survey and were still not at an optimum level. The Board and the school leadership team are committed to improving this. It is now the school-wide focus for the coming years, in order to embed the changes to our culture and improve wellbeing for all.

The report on the Maths Target showed that the results across the whole school were strengthening against School Expectations. The professional development our staff received in 2019 should continue to show growth in this area.

The report on Halswell School Expectations was reviewed for the second time by this Committee so we are now familiar with this report and its contents. There is a lot of detail in this report. The Associate Principals have been able to provide context and explanations for any anomalies. There continue to be good results for children completing all of their schooling at Halswell School. This report is also used as a basis to identify new and different groups for targeted focus or enrichment programmes. 

The Board of Trustees would like to acknowledge the hard work our staff put into raising student achievement at our school. We look forward to this continuing in the future.