28 May 2018

 Kia ora Parents and Caregivers

 On behalf of the Board of Trustees, I would like to thank everyone who completed the recent community survey. This is a great way for us to get feedback on what is working well and the areas that you would like us to focus on. One of the areas of feedback noted is that you would like to hear more from the Board. In light of this, we will now be providing regular updates to highlight some of the key themes that we are focusing on.

Student well-being and achievement

As a school Board we have overall responsibility for the school, the strategic policy making and governance, but our most important responsibility is student well being and achievement. Our primary goal is to aim for each child to leave BBPS ‘at’ or ‘above’ the expected curriculum level in every subject. We are focused on helping to accelerate the progress of those students who are not currently meeting the expected level, and ensuring that all of our students can progress from year to year, developing learner competencies to be life long learners. Student progress and well-being is presented to the Board each month via the Principal’s Report, including detailed investigations into areas requiring attention. The Board is also updated regularly on priority learner groups. Although National Standards have been phased out, Kelly and the senior leadership team continue to track student progress using curriculum levels.

 The school monitors student achievement in a number of ways including standardised tests, and regular ongoing feedback to students against learning intentions being worked on in class. Progress in the core subjects of reading, writing and maths is tracked and currently reported to parents twice yearly. The information gained from the assessments generates discussion by the senior leadership team, team leaders and staff to target support for individuals and groups. Areas of need are also addressed through targeted professional development for staff.

The improvements shown are indicators of a high performing school with an effective teaching staff. Given that by the end of 2017 43% of our enrolled students had English as a second language, the results are pleasing. The staff focused on writing in 2017, and this continues to be one of the main focus areas in 2018.

 Roll Growth

One of our regular conversations has been on the size of the school roll and how we can ensure we keep this within what the school can cope with. Over the last few years the school roll has been steadily growing to the point where we were running out of space, and the majority of our classes had more students per teacher than the recommended guideline. Running oversized classrooms puts pressure on our teaching staff and impacts on the learning environment. Last year we made the decision to not take any further out of zone enrolments, except where there was a sibling already at the school. We also added an additional board funded classroom and invested in additional teacher aides to support larger classes.

As a result we have seen our class sizes come down, and the time that our teaching staff have to spend with each child has increased.   Enrolments are coming in at a steady rate reflecting the ongoing housing development within our zone. We will continue to invest in supporting our teaching staff to help manage the roll, so that we can give every student the attention they need.   As a Board our goal is to not have to continually invest in more infrastructure and to keep the school footprint where it is today.

 School Donations

One of the key reasons we value the current school donation, is because it allows us to maintain this investment in teaching resources for all of our children, over and above the funding we receive from the government as a decile 10 school.  As a high decile school we receive limited additional funding, so we really do rely on the school donations to be able to provide additional teaching support for our children. Thanks to all of those people who have been able to support the school so far this year.

 Introducing Victoria Wu

Victoria Wu was co-opted on to the board in 2017. Victoria holds the portfolio of communication and marketing, as well as being a voice for our Asian community. She works for Uxbridge Arts and Culture Centre. Victoria has two children, one who attends BBPS. Her family immigrated from China in 2000. Victoria has a background in accounting, and enjoys representing different voices from our community.

I look forward to connecting with you again next term.

 Ngā mihi

Kieran Turner

Board Chair

Respect – Resilience – Relationships – Responsibility

Print or Save this Post