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Many of you will be preparing to be present at the AIS conference in June and take part in the APIS AGM. We look forward to meeting you at the conference.
The new Government has charted its plan to review Tomorrow’s Schools and set a new path for education. This is not a time to let others do the talking for you. We need to ensure that we engage with the consultative process to avoid capture and to be sure that what comes from the process includes and supports all the diversity of the current provision of education in New Zealand.
It has taken us nearly 30 years to have the courage to start with a clean sheet and review Tomorrow’s Schools. Whatever transpires from this process will have a major impact on the opportunities integrated schools have to provide values based education to the children of New Zealand. At present Integrated Schools are over 11% of the state’s provision of education in New Zealand. Integrated schools have a reputation for delivering high standards and supporting government aspirations for engaged learners. In the next few months we may have to share that information with a number of groups so that we remain an important part of the Government’s plan for delivering education.
I look forward to seeing many of you at the APIS AGM and at the AIS conference in June. Best wishes for a good second term.
Ngā mihi,
Paul Ferris
Chief Executive
We ask schools to please share this newsletter with your Boards of Trustees and staff. Use the print button on right-hand corner to print.
We seem to have dropped off the distribution list for a number of schools’ newsletters. We love to get your news. Please keep us in touch by post or email to nzceooffice@nzceo.org.nz.
EDUCATION SUMMITS
More than 1,500 people from the education sector are attending two Education Summits in Auckland and Christchurch this month. For those unable to attend, the Summit events will be followed by regional and other opportunities to be involved, including an online survey. A video about the initative, featuring the Prime Minister, is also available here.
ERO PUBLICATIONS
There have been some interesting recent publications from ERO, including Responding to Language Diversity in Auckland and Evaluation at a Glance: A Decade of assessment in New Zealand Primary Schools - Practice and trends. These and more are available on the ERO website.
The IRD are now accepting parents' 2018 school donation rebate claims.
A number of our schools have started to make their parents aware of an easier way to claim back their school donations and this has seen a spike in parents making claims. SchoolRebates.co.nz is a Kiwi company that helps parents easily claim back school donations.
Link to PDF of flyer.
School Rebates have also put together the blurb below that you can include in any communication:
Get cash back in your pocket - claim your school donation tax rebate
We encourage parents to claim their school donation each year but recent research shows that millions of dollars goes unclaimed every year by families across NZ.
Schoolrebates.co.nz have made it easy for you to claim your tax rebate back using their online platform. Their feedback shows the process is quick and easy, and if you’ve never claimed you can go back 4 years!
If you don’t have receipts you can request these as part of the online process and we will provide them directly to Schoolrebates.co.nz. No paperwork or dealing with IRD required.
To illustrate, if you have two children at school and are paying $600 a year in donations you are entitled to $199.98 - over four years this would be $799.92 in cash back.
If your school uses Facebook, you can also link up Schoolrebates on Facebook/Instagram @Schoolrebates.
What is the Partnership?
The Police and Education Partnership is a collaborative working group of organisations from the education sector and the New Zealand Police.
Why do Police have a national partnership with the education sector?
District police, individual principals, Boards of Trustees and schools have long had a range of formal and informal local relationships. The Partnership supports these relationships through a co-ordinated national approach that provides schools and Police with significant opportunities to achieve our shared goals.
The Partnership also acts as a reference group for how Police work with schools in a preventative role, such as partnering with schools to support students to be engaged and safe, providing early identification and intervention from family harm environments, or focusing on those who offend or at are at risk of offending.
Who are the members?
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What has the Partnership achieved in the past?
Over the last few years the Partnership has collaborated on a wide range of matters, including:
- developing consistent approaches and communicated them to schools, including for synthetic cannabis and psychoactive substances, school balls, alcohol supply to young people, and gang insignia in schools
- providing a consultation forum during Police’s process of changing the role of their School Community Officers, and for developing their school engagement model as well as templates for individual school partnership agreements and school profiles
- giving feedback during the development of national guidelines such as the Ministry of Education's 'Surrender and Retention of Property and Searches' and 'Bullying Prevention and Response' guidelines
- providing a wide dissemination network to schools, for example to assist Police to identify unknown children and young people in sexually-exploitive photographs
- providing a forum for mini-presentations to the sector on developing and current topics of common interest, such as Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED), sex offenders living near schools, and the abuse of methamphetamines.
For more information, contact Siobhan Dilly at NZCEO, s.dilly@nzceo.org.nz.
The Children's Commissioner and NZSTA recently released a report on student experiences of racism, Education Matters to me: Key Insights.
The report is structured under six key insights:
- Understand me in my whole world.
- People at school are racist to me.
- Relationships mean everything to me.
- Teach me in the way I learn best.
- I need to be comfortable before I can learn.
- It’s my life let me have a say.
These insights would be worth ongoing reflection in schools. The report is available online here.
 Photo courtesy of St Hilda's Collegiate, Dunedin - 2018 Prefects with Dr Townsley, Mrs Barron and Bishop Steven Benford |
St Hilda’s Collegiate School, Dunedin: In a newsletter late last year Principal Jackie Barron wrote significantly about ‘wellbeing’, reminding readers that it is not about being ‘happy’ but rather about self-managing emotions, being self-aware, being able to handle disappointment, and being able to persevere with optimism. She mentioned current issues for young women, trying to measure up to their own and others’ expectations, which has become a ‘toxic perfectionism’, the way social media are exacerbating the problems for girls, and the counterproductive results of parents wanting to protect their daughters from negative experiences – the helicopter parenting that can leave children with not room the experiment or risk failure. Readers may wish to ask the school for a copy of the newsletter, or talk to the principal about what she wrote.
McAuley High School, Otahuhu: On the back page of the 12 March 2018 Education Gazette advertisement for the Prime Minister’s Excellence Awards, the school was featured with a photo and a statement “At McAuley High School, we worked to foster our students’ connection to their culture and identity by bringing in Samoan and Tongan teachers.”
Our Lady of the Snows School, Methven, and St Catherine’s College, Kilbirnie, were both the subject of articles in the 30 April 2018 Education Gazette. Click here for the Our Lady of the Snows story and click here for the St Catherine's article. Students from Our Lady of the Snows were also on the cover of that Gazette.
For more of the excellent achievements in our schools, click here.