Naumai, haere mai ki te Kura Tuatahi - Akonga Aka Mariko

Welcome to the VLN Primary School April Pānui

Kia ora koutou katoa, Kia orāna, Talofa lava, Malo e lelei, Nĭ hăo 你好, Annyoung haseyo 안녕하세요, Namaste, Assalām alaikum, Hola, Bonjour, Hallo!

I hope you are enjoying a change of pace and the fresh Autumn days as you take a well earned break from a very busy term one. 

Our online classes are now well underway. At our last count we had approximately 650 learners from 56 schools participating in 55 different weekly classes. That's a lot of online learning to start the year with! With 17 schools new to the VLN Primary, support is needed in getting learning underway. Thanks to Lucie and her team for making sure things are running smoothly and to our awesome eteachers who collectively have such a wealth of expertise and knowledge to share with our learners. 

Our Gifted Learners Project is starting to gain momentum with  mentoring and Gifted and Going Deeper groups starting in Term 2. PLD sessions about Gifted Learners have been held with students' support teachers and will be held this term with our own eteachers. A number of Gifted Learners have enrolled into our prospectus programmes. There will be another opportunity later in term 2 to enrol your Gifted Learners into semester 2 prospectus programmes. Thanks to Jen who leads the Gifted Learners project, ably assisted by Alia. Thanks also to the Ministry of Education for providing these funded opportunities for our learners.

We are very pleased to announce that PLD funding for NEX Kōtuitui has been extended for a further three years. All teachers with an interest in online learning are invited to be part of this teachers' professional network. NEX Kōtuitui online teachers network has been really helpful in providing our teachers PLD opportunities and time to work together. Several of our eteachers recently attended FLANZ conference. The VLN Primary holds this contract on behalf of the NEX Kōtuitui online teachers network and in collaboration with our secondary colleagues NetNZ & OLC. 

The VLN Primary, NetNZ and OLC together collectively form the VLN Community. Last year we worked closely on our Covid19 response. Since this time we have realised the benefits of closer working relationships and have been exploring creating a single national entity. A two day retreat was held in March with VLN Community leadership and we are pleased to announce that we will be moving forward together with the support of the MoE. Our shared goal is to provide equity and access to online learning for all NZ students.  Although the VLN Primary is already a national entity with equity and access underpinning our kaupapa, it makes sense for us to partner with our secondary colleagues and the MoE to ensure future sustainability of online learning opportunities for students in the Primary sector. For our existing schools and akonga everything will be ‘business as usual’ in the meantime. We will keep you posted on developments as they are worked out.

Finally in this pānui, a reminder to all our schools to come along to our AGM next Thursday May 6th. We look forward to seeing you there!

Ngā mihinui maioha

Rachel, Lucie, Jen and the VLNP team