Week 5 Term 3 Newsletter 2024

Kia ora tatou, Talofa lava, Mālō e lelei, Kia orana, Bula vinaka, Namaste, Nǐ hǎo, Salve, Bonjour, Kamusta, de Groeten, Greetings.

What a cold weekend! Snow right down to sea level. Some great photos from the region were on the social media channels. I do hope that the children who haven't experienced snow before, really enjoyed it.

In the last newsletter I mentioned the announcement regarding the NZ Maths curriculum. Since then, there has been some very loud calls from across the country from Principal associations, teacher curriculum subject groups, and education unions. This conversation has not been just about the use of the data, but the pace of the change and lack of resourcing outlined to meet the need.

Education Minister, Erica Stanford, has subsequently released the following statement:
"We acknowledge it is going to take some time for us to fully implement the New Zealand Curriculum. The current timeline for curriculum introduction, feedback, and implementation runs through until 2027.

Getting the mathematics and statistics curriculum into classrooms next year gives us a longer period of time to embed, refine, and support teachers to make this change.

We know this means introducing two key curricular areas in the same year for Year 0-6 teachers and we will do our utmost to put in place as much support as possible to assist with this process."

Currently, there is a short turn around for feedback / consultation from the sector.

The fully updated national curriculum (Years 0-13), including all the other learning areas, wāhanga ako and subjects, will be available for all schools and kura to use throughout 2026, giving a full year of
implementation support before it’s officially required from 2027.

This Friday, we have our planned Term 3 Staff Only Day. We will be spending time working on our strategic priorities, as well as looking into same of the changes ahead for the English and Maths curriculum. Reminder school is closed this Friday, August 23.

As well as the core curricular areas, we know that we do very well in developing quality experiential learning opportunities. Coming up in the latter part of this term, is of course our School production "It's all History to me!". The Ruataniwha KapaHaka Festival is also a very important event in this term's calendar, with our tamariki and staff working hard in their practises for both of these events.

Thank you to those who attended our Olympics celebration day last week. It was so good having everyone enjoying themselves in some amazing activities throughout the day.

Thanks once again for all your support for all we do in our school.

Keep smiling

Shane

In this newsletter:

• Happenings in school

• Term 3 happenings

• 2024 Dates

• Term 3 Staff only day - August 23

• 2025 Term Dates

• Community notices