Although lockdown is uppermost in our minds at the moment it is worth taking a moment to reflect on the strategic progress that is being made at YMS. Good things are happening!

Yaldhurst Model School Board Update August 2021

At the start of the year the board confirmed the strategic goals for the school. You can see the full strategic plan here.

How are we doing against our goals?

Literacy

Allan in consultation with the teachers has reviewed the reading and writing curriculum across the school to ensure it scaffolds (builds upon itself) across the year groups. Achievement data for mid year has just been reviewed. There are pleasing results as of July 2021. For reading It is pleasing to see that we have 75% 'At' or 'Above' the YMS Learning Progress expectations for reading and 76% At or Above for writing mid way through the year.

But the work does not stop now. Sarah Dods, our YMS Literacy Leader, is working with teachers to identify how to support our learners who need additional in-class assistance to accelerate their learning.

School culture

Alisha Chinnery as our teacher-in-charge of Cultural Responsiveness Is facilitating engagement with local runanga to ensure we are working in partnership to provide a sense of whanaungatanga for all of our students and whānau. Staff and Board members have been invited to attend Te Taumutu Runanga Marae late August which is a great opportunity to form meaningful relationships to support our school developments. Due to COVID this has been postponed but a new date will be set as soon as possible.

Heather Tebbett, as SENCO, has been working to review and improve our response to support positive behaviour and culture - PB4L (positive behaviour for learning) is a Ministry of Education programme to support this. You will have seen the feedback from cross school workshops that have been undertaken and the great comments from students about what they are learning and more importantly applying in their classes.

Engaging whanau

We have recently reviewed the Reporting to Parents Policy to ensure it reflects our expectations as a board for what reporting and engagement parents can expect around their child’s progress. It is great to see increasing use of the Hero app and improvement in data quality to support the learning being visible.

Earlier this year the board asked for your comments about across school transitions and Year 7 and 8 at Yaldhurst. Thank you to the respondents.

Results showed that we have some work to do to ensure that there is better communication before the end of the year around how the year groups will be clustered the following year, and what students and families can expect as they move through different parts of our school especially the Yr3- Yr4 transition and move to more digital learning.

From the survey we are aware that there are a number of reasons why families choose an intermediate school for their child or wish to remain at an integrated Yr 1-8 school. YMS continues to offer Yr 7 and 8 as an option for your child.

It was fantastic to see such many families at the Matatiki Art exhibition at the end of Term 2 – these more informal opportunities to share learning and make connections across the school community are an important part of what makes YMS special.

Environment

We have established a sub committee of board who are focussed on the YMS rebuild – we have a good working relationship with the MOE around our rebuild and are looking forward to confirmation of the construction company in the next couple of weeks. They will undertake the design and build for our new school buildings. The image below is an indicative drawing of ‘size and location’ of the new buildings but no design is confirmed as yet.

We don’t have exact time frames yet but should have a programme in the next few weeks. First stage is alterations to the current Rimu (old library space) which will mean we have a suitable space for decanting during the rebuild but also longer term we end up with a more open hall space for library and school assemblies.

It is very exciting that the new wheels track is opening this week! This is a result of the SIP funding, support from the PTA and the amazing support from the construction companies to bring this to life.

Our staff

This month we celebrated our long term staff member Wendy Royfee who reached an amazing 20 years working at our school. Wendy, your support and enthusiasm for our students is amazing. Thank you.

Our families

Thank you for choosing Yaldhurst for your child. This is an exciting time for the school as we make some real gains in the achievement of our students and look forward to our long awaited new school buildings.

Kind regards

Rebecca Webster

Chairperson YMS Board of Trustees