May 2019 edition

Term 1 Report on Literacy and Mathematics

Staff shared with the Board a report of current levels of achievement in reading, writing and maths across the school. Teachers have made judgements using a range of tools to assess where students are working according to the National Curriculum levels. This will be a very informative tool - over the year we can assess students' progress in these areas and how well teacher interventions and strategies are working at a syndicate level.

Strategic Review
The Board began planning to review the strategic planning section of our School Charter. We will be gathering ideas from people and groups who have an interest in our school. In August we will invite you to express your views in a survey, which will help us set the school's strategic direction for the next three years. We would welcome everyone's thoughts and ideas for this important review.

Reporting to Parents

Goal Setting Conferences were held in the second to last week of Term 1. There an excellent response rate with 95% of families coming along. This compares with 87% at the same time last year.

Attendance Data

Our attendance data continues to be excellent. In Term one we had 94.5% of our students present at school. This confirms the findings discussed last year at the Board level after the Ministry of Education Attendance Survey in Term 2 of 2018.

Some points discussed were girls having a slightly better attendance than boys and a slight drop off in Year 8 attendance. It was extremely pleasing to see our Maori and Pacific students have similar data to our other students and ethnic groups. Across New Zealand these are two of the at risk groups in attendance data.

Although our attendance rates have maintained steadily across the last three years, our unjustified absences have increased. This is due to more families taking children for holidays during term time.

Roll Growth Building

The new Roll Growth classroom has arrived on site. It is a Prefabricated Classroom that was located at Wainuiomata for the last 8 years. To move the classroom on site the large tree that we had identified to remove with our drainage project was taken out. A temporary road in front of Rooms 14 & 15 has also been put in to make getting to and from the building safer. The building is now located next to Room 14.

Overall the building is in good shape, with nice carpet, furnishings and wall linings inside. The exterior of the building will need some work. The plan is to paint, connect it to services and build a deck over the remaining weeks of the term. We are currently waiting for consent from council before the building work can begin. The classroom will be needed for a new entrant class in Term 3 or 4.