Mālō e lelei
As you know, many Bellevue School families come from all around the globe. We are aware of the richness this brings to our school community and are striving to develop a local curriculum that is relevant to our students' cultures and identities so that all our children and families feel part of our school. There has been lots happening on this front over the past few weeks.
Our Mandarin Heritage Language group has been a huge success and, on Friday, Deeann Daniels our Year 4-6 Deputy Principal and SENCO hosted a ‘Coffee & Chat’ session for our families from China. As it turns out there were three different languages spoken in the room! Nevertheless, with the incredible language skills of Xinhua Wang (the community member who has been supporting this group) there was lots of great discussion. This was also a wonderful way to hear from some of our families for whom English is a second language about their experience of our school - both the positives and the barriers - which help us to improve what we do.
On Thursday we were visited by a member of the Ministry of Education ESOL verification team to review what we provide for our students who are learning English as their second language. The work we are doing in responding to the needs of our growing student population who are learning English as a second language (now 30% of our roll) through first language hui, connecting with families and professional learning for our teaching team was noted as a strength. Our next steps are to expand on the enrolment information we gather for families from overseas and to formally document our procedures that relate specifically to ELL students.
Next week is Tongan Language Week, so another opportunity to extend our knowledge of Pacific languages and learn a little more about our cultural heritage. Te Papa has some good resources for anyone wishing to participate.
Sickness
Term 2 and 3 over the past couple of years have seen schools facing staffing challenges and this year is no different. It is not uncommon for us to have several staff unwell on any given day and, though we have several plans in place to manage this as outlined in our June 6 newsletter, these inevitably have an impact on teacher wellbeing over time. This term, the classroom release time component has increased for each teacher which will of course support teacher wellbeing and is important in maintaining a workforce for the future. This raises another challenge, however, as schools draw from the reliever pool to provide cover for this increased release there are fewer and fewer relievers available. We are fortunate at Bellevue to have two known, skilled and experienced part time teachers who are part of our teaching team to provide this classroom release which minimises disruption to the programme for the students, but this is not always the case when we are faced with unexpected sickness. This inevitably causes inconsistency for the students which we recognise is difficult, but which is preferable to having to move to emergency measures such as learning from home for periods as some of our local schools have had to do. While we aim to keep learning programmes as consistent as possible for children, we appreciate your understanding when the circumstances make this challenging.
Mathematics - Responding to the media coverage
There was an announcement last week from the Prime Minister about the decline in New Zealand’s Maths achievement recently. The announcement stated that 22% of year 8 students were achieving at or above the curriculum expectation. This information was taken from the Curriculum Insights and Progress Study for Mathematics in 2023. There has been much discussion in the media about the way this figure was put together and the data used.
For the sake of context it may be helpful to note the following:
This data was formed on a very small sample size (42 schools and around 900 students at each year level - so 0.6% of the 466,177 students that Education Counts has as the number of students in Primary education in 2023).
The data was based on assessments against the newly refreshed curriculum which is still in draft form and has a different metric. The students hadn’t been taught from this curriculum. There was other data that the PM could have used which would have been a better representation of Year 8 Maths achievement.
The most accurate tool for countrywide assessment is NMMSA which assesses a bigger sample size from a mix of schools. This was last done for Maths in 2022. The NMMSA report showed there was little to no decline in Y8 maths achievement from 2013 to 2022. PISA is also often held up as a measure of achievement as it ranks our students against their peers across the OECD nations. In Mathematics, NZ ranks in the top quarter of these countries and the last findings stated - “After several cycles of stable performance, Aotearoa New Zealand's mean Mathematics score dropped 15 points, from 494 in 2018 to 479 in 2022. The OECD mean also dropped by 15 points over the same time period, meaning Aotearoa New Zealand's mean score continues to be higher.
In case you are interested the New Zealand Principals’ Federation’s response to this is HERE and an open letter from the NZEI which sheds light on the real challenge facing NZ schools is HERE.
Of course student achievement in Mathematics is a priority for us all. Is there more work to be done? Yes! Would we like more resourcing for professional learning. Yes!
Ironically, this week is Maths week and there is plenty of exciting learning taking place across the classrooms to celebrate - even without workbooks!
Mathematics - At Bellevue
Currently the Bellevue Board are looking at our student achievement data based on our mid year assessment. We have 87% of our students currently at or above the curriculum expectation (noting this is the existing curriculum of course). This is the third year for which we have maintained more than 80% of our students achieving at/above the curriculum expectation. This was also noted in our recent ERO review which you can read more about below.
Education Review Office - Bellevue School Evaluation Report 2024
School Evaluation Report
Te Ara Huarau is the evaluation approach that the Education Review Office (ERO) is using in our school. This is a developmental approach to evaluation where ERO and our school work together over time rather than as a one off review as happened previously. Te Ara Huarau is used in most English-medium state and state-integrated schools.
ERO maintains a regular review programme to evaluate and report on the education and care of young people in schools. Our school worked with ERO and contributed to writing our School Evaluation Report. The report reflects and informs our strategic priorities and direction for improvement in one or more areas that are important as we work together to improve outcomes for all our learners. ERO, like us, has a strong focus on equality and excellence. Future reporting will show our progress and achievement towards meeting the areas for improvement in this report. Public reports like the School Evaluation Report are published on ERO’s website.
A Board Assurance Report that shows how we are meeting regulatory and legislative Requirements has also been published.
Our School Evaluation Report (click link) can also be found at the bottom of the ‘About Us’ page on our school website.
As part of this review process our team provided evidence to our Evaluation Partner that positioned us mostly against the ‘embedding’ aspect of the School Improvement Framework. The language used throughout this report such as ‘increasingly’ or ‘strengthening’ is language that ERO use to reflect the embedding markers on the scale. The Bellevue team felt this was an accurate depiction of our school’s current strengths and reflected the work we are already engaged in with regard to reviewing and strengthening our Literacy curriculum, assessment that informs learning and our partnerships with families.
In light of the recent media coverage regarding Mathematics, we are also proud to note this as an area where student achievement has been improved and sustained over time.
Construction Work & School Arrival Time
A reminder for our families that the time for students to arrive at school is between 8.30am and 9am. Prior to this teachers are preparing and there is no supervision for students. This timing is especially important at present with the comings and goings related to the building of our accessible walkway. Due to the construction team working around our break times, road patrols and learning times there are narrow windows within which vehicles can be brought into the grounds safely. If you and your child are on the school grounds prior to this, please be vigilant for moving vehicles and take care. Please do not leave children unattended prior to 8.30am on the school grounds.
Community Conduct and Addressing Concerns
Our community conduct expectations (which can be found here and on our School Docs site) outline appropriate conduct for keeping our school a safe, healthy and supportive environment for all our community members. A reminder that there is a process for addressing concerns with the school (Raising Concerns) which begins by speaking directly with the person who can best handle the concern. In most instances this is the class teacher but, if this is not appropriate, please take your concern to the Hub Coach or Deputy Principal - Anne Smith (Year 0-3), Deeann Daniels (Year 4-6). This is so that a concern can be addressed by those who have the most information relating to the concern. When concerns are raised first on social media they are escalated before being able to be resolved, or at least addressed in a manner that keeps all parties safe. For more information, including when to involve the Board or the Principal, please refer to the details in the Raising Concerns procedure.
Reminders:
Our FUNdraisers committee mostly have students moving on at the end of the year and we are recruiting! There are lots of ‘wishes’ on the list including a rebuild of the little house that burned down and some new playground markings to brighten up our school. If you are interested in supporting our school to reach its fundraising targets then please get in contact with the team - see their update at the end of the newsletter.
Don’t forget to pop the John Parsons ‘Keeping Safe Online’ session at 6pm at Newlands Intermediate on 29 August in your calendars. This evening is mainly aimed at our Year 4-6 students’ families.
A reminder for our Year 6 families that the intermediate enrolments close at the end of this month.
Nofo ā
Annette
Remember to take a look at the Bellevue Website for longer term information (Parent Portal) or follow our closed group Facebook Page for quick updates or reminders.
