Charter 2010

Introduction

Education Act 1989, Sections 75 and 76

s.75 Boards to control management of schools –

Except to the extent that any enactment or the general law of New Zealand provides otherwise, a school’s board has complete discretion to control the management of the school as it thinks fit.

s.76 Principals –

(1) A school’s principal is the board’s chief executive in relation to the school’s control and management.

(2) Except to the extent that any enactment or the general law of New Zealand provides otherwise, the principal –

Shall comply with the board’s general policy directions; and

Subject to paragraph (a) of this subsection, has complete discretion to manage as the principal thinks fit the school’s day to day administration.

Governance

• The Kaikohe East School board emphasises strategic leadership rather than administrative detail, has a clear distinction between board and staff roles, concentrates on the future rather than the past or present, and is pro-active rather than reactive.

Management

• The board delegates all authority and accountability for the day-to-day operational organisation of the school to the principal.

The School and its Community

• • Kaikohe East School is a contributing school with a roll of approximately 210, of which approximately 98% are Maori.  Kaikohe East School teaches children from Year 0 to Year 6.  All students are taught the New Zealand National Curriculum.

  • The school provides high quality educational opportunities for its students.

  • The school is pleasantly sited and well resourced.  Staff, board members, and parents are very supportive of the work of the school.

  • Kaikohe East School has a number of sporting resources (swimming pool, playing fields, sealed court areas and two adventure playgrounds)

National Education Priorities

Kaikohe East School recognizes the government’s National Education Priorities:

National priorities are:

• • To provide success for all.

  • To provide a safe physical and emotional environment for students.

  • To provide opportunities for success in all the essential learning and essential skill areas of the New Zealand Curriculum.

  • To improve literacy and numeracy.

  • To develop a range of assessment and evidence gathering practices that provides sufficiently comprehensive data to evaluate the progress and achievement of students and to form future teaching and learning programmes.

  • To develop and implement teaching programmes aimed at improving outcomes for students who are not achieving, or who are at risk of not achieving, or who have special needs.

  • To improve the achievement of Maori students.

  • To report to students and parents on achievement of individual students, and to the community on groups of students and the students as a whole.

The school integrates the National Educational Goals and National Education Priorities at governance and operational levels by giving them full consideration when planning school developments or school/class programmes.

Cultural Diversity

• The Board takes all reasonable steps to provide instruction in Tikanga Maori (Maori culture) and Te Reo Maori (Maori language). 

• When developing policies and practices for the school every endeavour is made to reflect New Zealand Cultural diversity and the unique position of Maori culture.

Te Reo

• Parents may choose to enrol their children in the General classes, or the Bilingual classes.  

• The General classes have all their instruction in English. They also have some Maori Language instruction covering simple commands and greetings, and basic pronunciation. 

• Bilingual classes have up to 30-50% of their instruction in Maori. 

• A Kaiarahi i te Reo is also employed to support Bilingual class programmes.  

• Due to the high proportion of Maori students our school takes the opportunity to support and practise Maori protocol when appropriate and necessary.

Procedural Information

• The planning year for the board will be from 1 January to 31 December. The updated charter and annual report will be lodged with the Ministry of Education by June 7 each year along with the consultation plan.

Strategic Plan

Vision

To be:

• • • Proud of whom they are and where they come from

    • Prepared for and ready to accept challenges

    • Learners now and in the future

Core Values

We value the 4 Cs:

• • Be Considerate

  • Be Courteous

  • Be Cooperative

  • Use your Commonsense

Goals

To create a community of learners with:

• • High Academic achievement in Literacy

  • High Academic achievement in Numeracy

To create a community of Maori learners with:

• • High Academic achievement in Literacy

  • High Academic achievement in Numeracy

Strategies

• • Foster te reo me nga tikanga

  • Deliver the curriculum through stimulating, challenging, learner focused and enjoyable programmes.

  • Increased use of Information Communication Technology.

  • Ensure the school is staffed and resourced to achieve student’s academic potential.

  • Ensure quality professional development is provided to support needs.

  • Foster the partnership between the school and the wider community.

Annual Plan – 2010 Goals

Goal One - Literacy Achievement

Measures and Targets

Actions

Goal Two - Numeracy Achievement

Measures and Targets

Actions

Charter Consultation Plan

The Kaikohe East School Board consults annually with the Maori community and wider community.   

Processes for consultation include:

• • • School Newsletters

    • Parent and Board Meetings

    • Parent Teacher Interviews

    • Meet the Teachers evenings

    • Whanau meetings

    • Informal dialogue

    • Home visits

    • Curriculum Evenings

    • School Questionnaires and Surveys

Variance Report 2009-10

Goal 1 (NZC) For teaching staff to understand and begin to develop and implement a curriculum that is underpinned by and consistent with the principals of the NZC.

• This will result in improved student engagement in themes and topics

• This will result in improved attitudes to school

Rationale

• The new New Zealand Curriculum was distributed to the school late in 2008.

• Local schools met twice at Northland College to investigate how to incorporate the vision, the principles and the values into the schools.

• Staff at Kaikohe East felt that, while the combined meetings were beneficial in seeing the big picture, we needed to have PD that was aimed at our children and our level.

• Our aim was to:

  • Hold a minimum of eight staff meetings facilitated by David Seaman or a similar facilitator to help staff understand the implications of incorporating the new NZC into their class programmes.

  • Ensure systems are in place to gather information that is sufficiently comprehensive to enable evaluation of student progress and achievement.

  • Identify students and groups of students who are not achieving, who are at risk of not achieving or who have special needs and to identify aspects of the curriculum that require particular attention.

  •  In consultation with the school’s Maori community, develop and make known its plans and targets (see goal 3) 

What happened

• • David Seaman held six staff meetings at the school. (Personal reasons prevented him taking more than six) Senior management staff took two others.

  • Systems to gather information were put in place and a calendar developed so the data could be analysed and reported to the BOT. We decided on

    • STAR for year 3 – 6 reading,

      •  asTTle for year 3 – 6 written language (recount)

    • running records for year 1 and 2 reading

    • exemplars for years 1 and 2 writing

    • Kaikohe Maths Project testing for basic facts and place value in numeracy

  • Each of these are to be collated twice a year.

  • Pupils who were not achieving were identified using the above assessment tools.

  • In the case of reading, we employed a tutor to run HPP for 20 pupils in the lower group. We also utilised the RTLit for children most at risk.

  • In the case of writing, teachers received in-service training through KPAL, TEAM Solutions

  • Areas where we were not performing were identified. Those we decided to concentrate on included;

  • Reading comprehension (as opposed to fluency)

  • Deeper features in written language

  • Spelling

  • Basic addition and multiplication facts

  • Understanding place value in numeracy

  • Community consultation

    • A community afternoon tea was held to explain the NZC but was poorly attended.

    • Pamphlets supplied by the MoE were sent home.

    • Explanations were presented and ideas of how we might change our programmes were asked  for in the newsletter

    • The BOT was kept up to date through regular reports.

  • Investigative approach

    • The staff indicated they wanted direction in changing their pedagogy to fit in with the aims of the new curriculum.

    • Two staff meetings were set aside to develop ways in which we could incorporate the investigative approach into the fourth term programmes.

    • Towards the end of the fourth term, teachers reported back on how ell the investigative approach went. Results were varied, as was the degree of implementation.

Monitoring and reporting.

During 2009 the BOT received reports on:

• • Progress on implementation of the NZC (in February and as part of syndicate reviews)

  • Literacy (in May and November)

  • Numeracy (in August and December)

  • Visual art (March)

  • The library (goal 2 in June and also as part of each literacy report))

  • Health and PE (September)

  • Maori achievement (in November)

Condensed versions of these reports appeared in the school newsletter.

Goal  2   (literacy) 

To increase the utilization of the library and its resources to enhance literacy skills across the curriculum

Rationale

• The library is a pleasant environment with clearly signed, well defined literature areas, space to read quietly and comfortable furnishings. It is a well stocked resource with a wide range of up-to-date literature, suitable for the variety of needs of our students, including graphic novels, books by New Zealand authors, big books and student magazines, and material relevant to current learning programmes. 

• It is used on a daily basis during class time and is open at lunch times when between 10 and 20 pupils attend.

• The staff felt, however, that the library and its resources we re not being used to its full potential.

• We believed that this resource could be made even more valuable by:

  • Using the library more for research into topics

  • Updating the computers and using these to develop research skills.

What we did

• Staff meetings were held to up-skill teachers in teaching library skills and to ensure optimum use of the library to link with literacy in the classroom. 

• Extending the knowledge and use of the Alice and SCIS programmes occurred for a few teachers but not for children.

• Teachers were provided with a set of library orientation and skills modules for each year level which

  • Gave children knowledge of the library set up and how to find books –authors or subject matter

  • Taught how to browse

  • Developed research skills

• Parents were encouraged to read to and with their children at home to promote the importance of reading through posters and newsletters. 

• Old computers were not replaced but is part of the 2010 budget.

• The number of books children are allowed to take out has been doubled in order to help increase the number of books children read.

• There has been an increase in the use of the library for reading, reading to the children and teachers being reading role models, by reading independently with the children.

• Classes were encouraged to promote authors, types of books and topics, in the library.

• New books or a specific author were promoted regularly at assembly and in the library.

Monitoring and reporting.

• Library borrowing showed a marked increase in the number of books being borrowed. 

• All classes use their library time, some classes continue to use the Library twice per week. 

• Use of formative assessment to monitor skills learnt from orientation and skills modules – this did not happen

• The use of  ICT for research for staff was consistent however for use by children due to the lack of ICT hardware this was minimal.  Being part of an ICT Cluster in 2010 we hope to remedy this. 

• Reports were made to the Board of Trustees in June and were part of the Literacy Reports.

Goal 3: (Achievement of Maori pupils)              

In consultation with whanau of children in the bi-lingual unit, we will develop an overarching philosophy defining policies, plans and targets for improving achievement of pupils within the bi-lingual unit. 

This will include, but may not be limited to, the following:

• • A name for the bilingual unit which incorporates both classes

  • Language ability expectations in Te Reo and English for written and oral language (benchmarks?)

  • Preferred methodologies of teaching eg pedagogy which reflects effective bi-lingual teaching and learning

  • The role of the whanau within the unit

  • Expectations of whanau and by whanau

  • The role of ‘the unit’ within the school

Rationale

Rangimarie and Tumanako are two classrooms within the school which are identified as being ‘The Whanau unit’.  Rangimarie has Y0 – Y3 students and Tumanako is made of children from Y4 – Y6.  At the end of 2009 it was felt  there was no overarching philosophy nor policies that inform the staff, students or wider community of the expectations, plans and/or targets of these 2 ‘special character’ classrooms.

What we did

• • A survey was sent out to families during term 1 of 2009. this was to gauge their feelings, thoughts and expectations of the whanau unit.

    • The aim of the survey was to provide baseline data and then hold whanau hui to discuss issues raised. The main problem was a lack of replies.

    • It was hard to make assumptions when so few replies were received.

  • Parent/teacher/child meetings were used as another opportunity to talk with whanau and discuss expectations. These ended up being more about individual pupils progress rather than an overall picture of the unit as a whole.

  • Later on in the year another survey was carried out.

    • This one was less detailed and required whanau to tick boxes and add comments only if they wanted to.

    • More responses were received and they were mostly positive and supported the status quo.

    • The results were collated and statements made as to “Where to from here?”

    • The survey results were reported to whanau and to the BOT

Evaluation

• • The reporting took longer than expected and as most responses supported the status quo, it was difficult to use the results to facilitate change.

  • Progress in implementing change was hampered by the unit having only one permanent teacher during the year. Some decisions were deferred to 2010 when the unit should be fully staffed with permanent staff.

  • In 2010 the focus will be on policies, plans and targets. These will be developed by the teaching staff, senior management and then presented to the whanau for discussion.

Ministry Approval

• Link to Ministry of  Education letter of approval (PDF 84k).

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