Thank you all for your feedback about the satellite campus. We had 106 people take the time to respond. I have now had a chance to go through and summarise the key points for you.
Overall, 86% of parents have indicated they support this initiative, with over half the respondents strongly supporting the establishment of a satellite campus. The responses show a preference for a focus on the opportunity to ensure work is completed to a high standard before being assessed. Generally, parents have also indicated that they want the centre to have a focus on supporting students’ academic success. The graph above summarises these findings.
Here is the thinking that is informing our planning for the satellite campus moving forward:
This opportunity must benefit our students and enhance their ability to achieve NCEA.
The space we are considering is self-contained and will be staffed by our teachers (mixing and mingling with other aspects of the university will be limited at this stage).
Initially, we envisage that our students will attend this campus to do short courses that we would like to run, and already run, at school but don’t have the space for. These courses will be both vocational and academic.
We envisage growing this opportunity during the year to become a centre for academic acceleration, a place that our staff can work alongside students (probably year 12 and 13) who need support to polish and complete their assessment work. This focus has become even more important given the NCEA changes that I mentioned above.
We are exploring ways that students can be nominated by teachers (in consultation with that student) to attend the campus and be supported to polish their work to a high quality before it is submitted. We want to maintain strong connections with the school. In order to keep connections strong between school and the campus, we don’t want to timetable students to be there over long periods of time. We also want to make sure that the work at the campus is connected to school learning and strengthens subject understanding.
Buses will be provided at the beginning and end of the school day to transport students to the satellite campus and bring students back to school.
We will use our existing policies and procedures as they apply to the campus setting to ensure we are able to maintain a healthy, safe environment for our young people to learn in. We intend to have a full-time staff member overseeing campus operations ensuring this is the case.
I hope this has answered some of your questions and I will endeavour to keep you updated as we progress this space.