August 2019 Edition

Kia ora koutou. 

Thank you to everyone who has completed our community survey on the future direction of Maungaraki School. We are excited to see the feedback so far and look forward to engaging with you more over the next few months.

At our second board meeting last week, Kaylee Gibbs was voted in as the Deputy Chair. A big thank you to Kaylee for accepting this role.

The other highlights from the meeting include discussions on attendance, progress towards excelling in literacy and mathematics, and providing extra security for our school.

Attendance

Student attendance at Maungaraki School continues to be very good. Attendance rates for all our student groups are outperforming their peers at similar schools. We feel this shows we have an engaging programme and that our children want to be at school.

Term Two Report on Literacy and Mathematics

You might remember in our May report that our teachers made initial judgements, using a range of tools, to assess where our students are according to the National Curriculum levels in reading, writing and maths.

At our meeting we reviewed the results from Term Two. Maungaraki School is tracking well to have most students at or above the curriculum level in all three areas by the end of the year.

For the students who have not made sufficient progress in the last year, teachers are targeting each of these students with specific strategies to support their learning.

Earlier this year, our school successfully received funding for professional development in mathematics until the end of next year. Mathematics expert Julie Roberts has been working alongside our teachers as they review their practice. This has had a significant impact and staff have enjoyed trying new approaches in their maths teaching.

Security

Over the past few months, the school has had a rise in unwanted activity after hours. The Board has approved spending to update our security system and develop an effective bell system which makes evacuations, lockdown drills and bell times easier to manage. This will involve setting up a viewing screen and repurposing some of the existing security network. We may also need to look at additional security and bells with our new buildings being developed.

Next meeting and Board of Trustees information

Our next Board meeting will be held at 6.00pm on Wednesday 18 September in the school staff room. If there is anything you would like to discuss with the Board or you would simply like to learn more about the governance of the school, please see the Board of Trustees section of the school website or contact us for details.

Ngā mihi nui

Paul, Kaylee, Chris, Megan, Lizzie, Wayne and Shane