Principal News

Teachers know how your child is performing through a range of formal and informal testing, observations, self and peer evaluations. These results are collated and presented to the Board of Trustees and are used to evaluate our strategic goals. I have attached our current Strategic Plan overview at the bottom of this page for your interest.

I am pleased to announce that we have had some excellent results this year including:

• 89% of our students are reading at an expected level.
• 89% of our students completing mathematics at an expected level
• A significant improvement in mathematics motivation
• An improvement from 25%-33% of our students performing above our expectations in mathematics in Year 6

Mr Robin Hartley has also completed an extensive review of student well being at school. Initial results from a comprehensive survey indicated that we had a concerning number of approximately 20% of children in Year 5 and 6 had a negative view of some aspects of the school.

After further investigation including further surveying, observations and interviewing, the results came back very different. Some were very simple errors of form filling out while others who felt they were bullied regularly were often reliving the same moment over and over again.

Bullying can occur in many forms at Kaikorai just as it does in all schools and workplaces and we take it very seriously.  However, what also became very clear is that we need to continue to develop the resilience of our students and provide them with strategies to cope in a range of settings. We are considering introducing techniques such as mindfulness for some or all students to help them with the confidence and anxiety. If you have any thoughts on this, please contact Mr Hartley. rhartley@kaikorai.school.nz

Thank you to all of the staff for achieving such excellent results and well done to the students for all of your successes this year. Thank you also to all of the parents who support your children in their learning. It really is an important partnership!

We are on the homeward run, but things do not slow down over the next three weeks. Please keep an eye on the website, app or key dates on the front page of this newsletter for all of the upcoming events.

Kind regards

Simon Clarke