You may be aware that the focus for our whole school assembly in Week 7 was “All About Whānau”. I want to explain some of what lies behind this in terms of the journey your children are making through their school lives.

Those of you with children at the schools for which we are a major feeder (Somerville Intermediate and Botany Downs Secondary College) will know that they have built their day-to-day operating structures around a whānau system. The idea is that a large school like BDSC is broken down into smaller whānau which are like small schools within a larger whole school. Each whānau has a teacher as a leader who has many of the responsibilities a principal would carry out in a smaller school. Opportunities for student leadership are greatly increased with each whānau growing leaders and providing them with opportunities to use the skills they are learning.

All this provides students with a home base at school to which they feel they belong, and with which they can identify. With schools like BDSC which were built with a whānau system as part of the design plan, students also have a physical place associated with their whānau where they can hang out with friends, prepare a snack, or do some homework.

Our whānau system at Point View aims to be a first step on this journey for students. We hope that the whānau experience we provide will help them transition into their new schools more easily when the time comes.

Thank you for your support and encouragement as we grow and develop our whānau programs.