The BoT had its final meeting of the year last week. Here are the main areas we covered.

The meeting kicked off with a review of the Strategic Plan and the goals we set for this year.  It was great to see we had achieved everything we set out to do.  We made some adjustments along the way to achieve new goals and looked at next year's goals.  If you are not familiar with our plans then check them out on the school website, it's a good measure of how we are going as a school!

As part of this review we looked at the Community Survey sent out recently, this is a great way to see how we are going. We received some great comments that gave us an insight into what you think. Just on this, two parents raised issues that had not been discussed with staff, parents should talk directly to the staff rather than using our survey.  The results are really good - the table below shows the weighted-average score per question. The higher the score the better (up to 5):  Remember, this is based on achieving the Strategic Plan Goals we set. 

• Hauora 3.97
• Learning Pathways 3.87
• Culture 4.39
• Environment 4.16
• Communication 4.39
• HAPPY 4.45

A really positive response from the community overall, with some areas to work on.  Most pleasing is the high "happy" score.  This is really important to the Board and Staff for our community.  This data is used to help modify our plans and work on improvements for next year, so thanks everyone for completing this!

Ben, Amanda and Megan took us through the new technology curriculum and how it works in practice.  This was an informative and hands-on session where we got to see and experience some of the absolutely amazing things happening with technology in our school.  We all remarked how lucky we are to have such advanced teaching aides and switched-on teachers in this space.  It's an area we are aiming to strengthen!

Next, we moved on to a presentation on the learning statistics across this school.  This data is a vital part of what the BoT works on, achievement is fundamental in delivery of education.  A highly informative technical session was run by Ben Galletly and Amanda Clarkson showing the excellent progress and achievements across years, including the achievement of our Maori children which is information required by the Ministry. There is a lot of work that goes into interpreting the results (they are based on individual assessments and have just been finalised), but the overall trends are positive.  As a school that has seen fast and substantial growth, achievement isn't without its challenges, but Sylvia and the entire team are focused on what's important and making sure we give each child the ability to raise their achievement levels.  As parents we all have this responsibility to support the staff in this as well, staying engaged and knowledgable about our child's learning and working with the school certainly pays off.

Finally we moved into general business, where we covered off property matters, finances and our end of year celebrations. I think you would have seen a note from Sylvia reminding anyone that has outstanding activity costs.  In really simple terms we risk not running some of these programs if we don't get input from parents.  Sylvia is always open to helping families with this, but let's act in the interests of all our families financially.  

We are all looking forward to the end of year celebrations and will take time to thank everyone in the community and school for their support and everything you do for the school.  Our staff are champions, we are really grateful for everything they do.  Be safe over the holidays.  Look forward to seeing you at the final assemblies and in 2020.

Simon, Rob, Steph, Megan, Sam & Tegan