A coherent plan for the development of our school sport

Background

In November 2018 Hornby High School enlisted the support of Sport Canterbury to develop, administer, and analyse, a survey of students, Whānau, and staff, to gather their views on the future of sport at Hornby High School, and to assist in determining the future pathway for development of sport within the kura.

The intention has been to assist the Board of Trustees in its resource allocation decision making to create the greatest benefits for students from our limited resources. The survey was completed by 113 whānau members, 367 students, and 40 staff members, a fantastic response, thank you.

The sports surveys coordinated by Sport Canterbury revealed three dominant themes.

1. All three groups of the community agreed that sport and physical activity are important

2. Students and whānau want more tournament opportunities

3. Students want wider social and participation opportunities in sport within the school

The strategic review group adds to that the premise that Hornby High school does not have sufficient resources to be all things to all people at the moment. If we accept that contention, then we need to be strategic about which sports to offer, and be quite clear about why we offer those sports.

We also believe that the overall objectives of our school sports programmes should be to promote:

• Fitness

• Health

• Fun

• Character

• Key competencies/21st century skills such as collaboration, communication

• Calculated risk taking

In doing so we believe that sports programmes can best support each student’s journey towards the school’s graduate profiles, and the school’s vision to be ‘a centre of creative excellence’.

We believe that our sports offerings could be categorised in one of the following three ways:

1. Performance sport, the aim of which is to compete at the highest possible level, aiming for competitive success.

2. Developmental sport, the aim of which is to allow smaller groups of students to develop their participation and skill levels in specific sports, whether or not these appeal to larger or smaller groups of students.

3. Participation, the aim of which is to simply encourage students to ‘give it a go’, get active, and have fun.

Performance sports

We believe that Hornby High school currently has strengths in the following seven sports, based on either competitive results, participation numbers, or established talent (often developed by external sports clubs). These are listed here in no particular order:

1. Athletics

2. Basketball

3. Volleyball

4. Netball

5. Football

6. Badminton

7. Rugby League and Rugby Union

Goals

To have individuals or teams from the above codes competing in secondary school, provincial and South Island level tournaments

To have teams from two of the seven identified sporting codes represent Hornby High School at national tournament level within five years.

Performance pathways for our students include athlete, student coach and referee.

Initial Strategy

The Board of Trustees has allocated additional funding from its 2019 operations grant to support extra staffing in the sports area. These funds will be used to employ an assistant to the sports co-ordinator, a ‘sports activator’, to support the operational offerings within the school. The sports co-ordinator will then focus on developing additional resourcing to allow the development of those selected performance sports, and the broadening of the developmental and recreational sports and activities on offer within the kura.