Equity & Access

For more than a decade we have been committed to Pt England students having equity of access to learning tools. And this includes our multimedia computers. We have tried not to be seduced by the models many schools uphold where selected students do very mundane "skill and drill", "copy and paste" or secretarial activities and call it eLearning. And we certainly never use our digital tools as a reward system.This is a lofty goal when our students are extremely diverse, and we have a way to go with this.At a simple level, this means that we have at least a 1:6 ratio of students:computers in EVERY classroom. So if every student, every day, had half an hour of access to a personal computer that would still only occupy 3 hrs of the 5 hrs in a class day. In theory every student should have half an hour to do creative learning tasks on a multimedia machine every day. And there would still be a couple of hours for teachers to use the computers for other activities OR for the students to be engaged in other learning tasks.At a more complex level, as we consolidate our 1:1 environment for Year 1-8, we acknowledge some very real challenges with several groups of students; those who struggle at an elemental level with aspects of academia, those with severe behavioural needs, those who have come from other schools and are so far behind Pt England students in IT skills, our NESB students who struggle not only with language but with the whole digital environment, etc. We have agreed that EVERY student in the school will be part of the 1:1 programme.

One thing the years of endeavour and our Manaiakalani research has repeatedly shown us is that many marginalised students are engaged by, or respond positively to, digital environments. Our belief is that this must be leveraged as an aid to diverse learners, not dismissed as "The only time Sione stays on task is when he is using the computer - so when he is good I will reward him with time on the computer." We have multiple examples at Pt England School of this kind of student exceeding expectation when given equity of access to learning tools which delight them.

We also acknowledge that our staff come from diverse backgrounds in Digital Learning. We want to support and enable our staff at the same time as expecting that our teaching staff must be 'as good as a ten year old" using the basic tools of 21st century learning. Check out this document if you wish to have this further clarified. We no longer hold extensive PD sessions around IT skills as we expect our staff to be " Lifelong Learners" and "Self Managers" who ask for help and build learning networks in areas they need to develop - just as we expect our students to. Manaiakalani PLD team run an extensive Toolkits programme after school, so please sign up for those.