Week 10 update

Our developing School Vision

Below is our developing vision from our initial consultation and development with staff, board, FOS and Whanau Hui. The foundation of our vision is centred around our Kaitiaki (guardian)  'Tia' who stands at the front entrance to our school with the 'Diploma of Life' in his hand (for more about the story of Tia click here). Tia stands as a reminder to us all that we are all working together, whether we're a student learner or a teaching team supporting the learning,  in this journey of "Learning for Life". Together this is represented by the statement "Working Together as One - Mahi Tahi Tatou".

Our why (the centre) is supported by the key principles of our practice - the how this looks in our school, and then by the outer circle, what these principles look like in practice across our teaching teams.

Early next term I'll be sharing and discussing this overview of our vision with those same groups (staff, board, FOS and Whanau Hui) again and will also have some opportunity during the 'parent - teacher' learning conference sessions in Weeks 3 & 4 for you catch up with me about this development. It's exciting to breath some new life into the vision of our school as it centres and drives everything we do. I look forward to catching up with you at one of those opportunities early in the new term.

Our Reporting Philosophy

Our Reporting to parents practice that is going to be showcased around your child's Seesaw learning journey is based on the philosophy of acknowledging the learning process that develops across the full six year journey of primary school. Every child progresses and achieves in a different way - unique to who they are! We use assessment strategies as a tool to support our understanding of everyday learning observations and conversations, not as the key indicator. We want to share with you your child's real life authentic learning examples, based on developing the Key Competencies (Managing Self, Relating to Others, Participating and Contributing, Thinking, Using Language, Symbols and Texts)

These rich, key competency based, journal entries will be shared with you via your child's seesaw account. All supporting comments in any journal entry will provide the learning context that the skills being displayed represent and will give you an understanding of what their progress and achievement, relevant to your child as an individual, looks like against national expectations.

I look forward to sharing the beginning of this 'Seesaw' journey with you in Week 2 of Term 3 and to its rollout being supported by our Learning conference sessions in Weeks 3&4.
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Education Resourcing Review

Last week I attended the first Ministry of Education session on the proposed directions for change around the way our education system is funded. At the moment our school is funded the following way:

• the school submits its roll data from 1 July and from that the Ministry calculates our funding for the next year - with a prediction on how many five year olds are going to turn up!
• they also take into consideration the decile of our school (we're a '7' our of 10 - with 10 being the highest and least funded).
• this is then turned into a base funding amount and the roll numbers predicted are used to calculate staffing (ie teachers) and classroom space (if you're out of zone we don't get square metres for your child!)

The Education Minister wants to scrap the decile system (which is based on census information, taking into account income, property values etc from a cross section of our community) and attempt to target the funding in a more flexible way. The problem with trying to improve a funding system without looking at all the other elements that influence a schools make up is hard not to be skeptical about. School zones - which are put in place to control roll growth - create a decile / real estate bubble in their own right. The agencies that support our school, along with us, have a strong understanding of the learning and resource need across our community but they want to develop a new 'formula' from the centre that attempts to target that.

Anyway we're at the start of (apparently) a process that they want to have developed and refined before the next census in 2020 (which is when they recalculate the deciles again). Have a browse of the seven proposed directions for change but take note that these are being proposed with no funding increase, that is the size of the funding pie does not change! Note number seven and ask yourself where the money is going to come from for the increased private school funding?

Over the next term this is another thing that I'll aim to discuss with the different groups across our school so when the real consultation with the Ministry begins I can truely represent the feeling of our community.

Have a great term break!