Ki te kahore he whakakitenga ka ngaro te iwi

Without foresight or vision the people will be lost

Kia Ora, Nǐ hǎo, Greetings,

Welcome back everyone to term two! Our students look like they have had a good holiday break, and returned on Monday morning full of enthusiasm.   Over the holidays we had the ceiling in the room one to five corridor cleaned and painted, some of the classroom ceilings touched up, and heat pumps installed in rooms ten and eleven, and in the middle school to improve our teaching and learning environment.  Next on our property upgrade is replacing the guttering and some of the roofing, which should start later in the term.  We are still at the planning stage working with the architect on further upgrades for rooms one to five.  Thank you to Rachel Penney from the Board of Trustees for organising the contractors.

Welcome to our new students who have started with us this term:  Felix-Kupa Pohe-Waa, Tingpu Li, Tahlia Meli, Michaela Robertson, Ethan Robertson, William Si, Marina Poomphuang, Monique Schenck, Dylan Zhang, Maureen Saipani & EJ Saipani.  Welcome back to Mrs Giles and Mrs Everard, who have done a wonderful job getting room four ready for our new entrants.

I had the privilege of presenting at and attending the AERA (American Educational Research Association) conference in New York over the holidays, as part of the special interest group looking at Leading Educational Change.  There were many big common themes around the globe such as the need for the education system to change to meet future employees needs, ensuring we work collaboratively with communities to introduce new initiatives in education – while also carefully thinking about what we need to keep from our existing system, ensuring the well-being of staff and students and how this may look in schools, putting learners in the driver seat – the change from teacher directed to a more shared ownership of learning,  how to put research into practice with limited resources and the importance of teaching staff and students to become adaptable agile learners (and many other key ideas).   Other countries were very interested to hear about New Zealand initiatives, and hear about examples from BBPS.  It was a stimulating conference, where I have made some great connections with other researchers and schools.  I look forward to sharing more as we look to develop the future direction of the school. After a week in New York it also increased my gratitude for the amazing place we live, where we enjoy a less frantic lifestyle!

School Uniform

As we are now heading into colder weather, students should be dressed in their winter uniform, with black school shoes.   We would appreciate your support with ensuring students are wearing the correct uniform.   The link is http://www.bbps.school.nz/school-uniform/  for uniform details.

Report Feedback

Thank you to all of the families that took the time to fill out the survey on school reports.  There was strong support for wanting to know how pupils compared against national expectation, pupil progress over time,  and effort and attitude.  Some support was given to comments around how you can help at home.  There was also strong support for a personalised general comment, with most people also interested in seeing a rating against the key competencies and school values. 

Seventy percent of parents support online reporting, with ten percent not having feelings either way.  In the comments section, a few parents requested to see where their child stood within their year group.  While we are happy to continue to show where your child sits against the expected curriculum level, we don’t rank students within schools as research has shown this to be detrimental to student’s self esteem who do not feature in the top set, and fosters the competitive as opposed to collaborative approach we are fostering in our classrooms.    

The senior leadership team have spent the term investigating a range of reporting systems, and we will be transitioning to a more responsive online reporting system later in the year, which will allow you to have ongoing access to your child’s progress and assessments.  (More information to come later in the year).  In the meantime we have created a report to satisfy the mid year requirement, which reflects the elements most requested through the survey.

Lateness to School

We had twenty six students arrive at school late for the first two days of school.   Not only is this unsettling for the students themselves, teachers have often got lessons underway, and then have to reteach the late students which is disruptive to learning of the rest of the class.  Please can you ensure your child gets to school with time to unpack their bag and start the day with the rest of their class.  We would appreciate your support with this.  

Strategic Community Survey – (Have your say)

Ki te kahore he whakakitenga ka ngaro te iwi

Without foresight or vision the people will be lost

As a relatively new Principal and Board of Trustees, we feel it is timely to hear from our school community to help inform the future vision, direction and on-going development of the school.  We value your feedback and ideas, and hope you can take the time to complete our online survey.   Survey Link.

PTA News

Kind regards

Kelly Slater-Brown

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