Firstly, it is so good to be back at Te Ao Mārama and amongst the buzz and excitement of our happy school again. My sabbatical was a wonderful opportunity to learn, reflect and refresh.

I enjoyed the opportunity to attend an International Principals Conference in Canada, travel, study and also refresh.  

I feel very grateful for the opportunity and I do want to express my very sincere thanks to the Board, and to those who stepped up while I was away, particularly our Leadership Team and Office staff.  I am filled with immense gratitude for the incredible team that kept our school ticking along during my absence.

In this newsletter we are incredibly proud to share an overview of our Midyear Student Achievement summary.  We are absolutely delighted with the results and we can see the impact of sustained time at school for both students & staff (2023/2024 being unaffected by COVID-19) , and the impact of our professional learning, extra staffing and resourcing, and the wonderful skills and effort of our staff.

Many of you will be aware of recent media articles and Government educational announcements related to literacy and mathematics achievement.

An announcement earlier this week stated that only 22 percent of students at Year 8 are at, or above, the curriculum benchmarks for maths.  This is clearly a concern but it is really important to note that the authors of the study (University of Otago and New Zealand Council for Educational Research) also reported “What we’re seeing in mathematics is a change in curriculum and a new benchmarking process rather than a change in achievement.  We’ve been tracking student achievement in mathematics at Year 8 for more than 10 years, and in that time, there has been no evidence for improvement or decline. We do have a new draft curriculum however, and the provisional benchmarking exercise we carried out indicates it requires a higher level of proficiency than the 2007 curriculum.”

For our school, we are awaiting further information about the new curriculum, policy changes and requirements as these have not been released.

As a school, we have always had a flexible approach ensuring these core areas are explicitly taught and also integrated throughout our day. Our teachers skilfully use the curriculum to teach in ways that best suit the learning, including the importance of actively involving students, working collaboratively and learning through play.

This approach is underpinned by research, and is also evident in the progress being made by our learners.

We also firmly believe in the importance of developing learners that are well rounded citizens and our schoolwide values.  These are critical skills to not just survive in a rapidly changing world, but hopefully thrive.