25th May 2023

Kia ora koutou

I have been working on transferring all of our policies onto a platform called Schooldocs. Here is the blurb supplied by Schooldocs. I will put the link in next week’s newsletter as there are still a couple of things to do before we can share it.
‘Our school has been working with SchoolDocs to create a website for our policies and procedures.
The school works on a subscription basis with SchoolDocs to maintain, update, and review our policies. SchoolDocs provides us with a comprehensive core set of policies, which have been well researched and align with the National Education and Learning Priorities. The policies and procedures are tailored to our school, and the school supplies specific information such as our charter, and procedures for behaviour management, reporting to parents, etc.
SchoolDocs updates, modifies, or creates policies in response to changes in legislation or Ministry guidelines, significant events, reviews/requests from schools, and regular reviewing from the SchoolDocs team. Our school board has the opportunity to view changes/additions and comment on them before they are implemented. We will advise you when policies are up for review and how you can take part in the review’.
By using SchoolDocs we hope that our policies and procedures will be much easier to access and the review process more streamlined and robust.

Industrial action by the teacher’s union has been postponed while the negotiating team meets with the Ministry of Education after some positive talks with the Minister of Education. It is not totally off the table with a possible strike action on Wednesday 31 May. We will not know if this is the case until Monday next week. This is just a heads up in case talks break down. If the strike were to go ahead we would most likely be closed for the day.

I have had a steady stream of children into my office this week (and last) to share the stories they have written. It is a part of the job that I will miss - being able to give positive feedback to children who are showing a sense of achievement with their schoolwork and to interact with them in ways that may help them want to continue to do so. I guess as I get closer to finishing I will have more of these moments.

We had the follow up of the harakeke experiments this week. Josh and Julia have been impressed by how much the children remembered from two weeks ago. They have also left us some posters outlining the kaupapa of gathering flax and the process that was used to undertake the experiment. This has been a really good science outreach programme and one that I hope we can take part in again at some point in the future.

I have been working with ERO (Jim Turrell) this term in their new partnership model. Jim has looked at compliance with our legal obligations and we are now working on an evaluative focus before he will finalise the school profile report which will then be released to the public. The key statement will be - ERO and the school are working together to evaluate (this is where we insert the focus) is informing teaching, learning and planning for continuous improvement. The bit in brackets is the bit we are hashing out at the moment taking into account current achievement data, our strategic goals and any other factors that may contribute to where we are heading, such as the recent schoolwide review.

Hei kona mai I roto I nga mihi, Goodbye for now and thanks