Learners at the Centre

Inclusion, Belonging and Safety

Our school has long been committed to ensuring that each child and their family felt loved, accepted and included.

In 2023 we have been in our second year of implementing and embedding the Mitey Programme which is focused on the wellbeing of every learner.

Our opening unit of work for the year, focused on the Aotearoa Histories curriculm with a particular lens on local history and our burgeoning relationship with Ngāti Paoa. This work moved from an emphasis on belonging, "knowing the ways" and understanding our whakapapa, to focusing more specifically on "where I fit in the scheme of things".

We have taken pains to consult with our community on multiple occasions and in multiple ways to find out what they want for their tauira, their school, their teachers and themselves. We have collated this information and are in the process of forming this into goals for 2024.

Pastoral care for our tauira and kaiako is a weekly agenda item at staff and management meetings and is reported monthly to our Board of Trustees.

Our Learn, Create, Share pedagogy is a great way for tauira to express themselves about how they feel and what is important in their lives.

Below is a great example for Y4 tauira about what it means to understand one's feelings

PES_Carruthers_DinosaurDay.mov

Each year in the Manaiakalani Roopu, we collect Learner Voice about an aspect of their learning. This year we collected information about how they saw themselves as Readers. As you can see, we have some real work to do in this area, not  just in our own school, but also a cross the Manaiakalani Collective.

W8T1 Prefects' Korero Just Roll with It.mov

To conclude this section, here's another Learn, Create, Share digital learning object, made by our prefects and shared with our school as the value of the week

High Aspirations

As mentioned in our introduction, we are privileged to work in the Manaiakalani Network, across 120 schools spread around these motu and with our Research and Development Team in order that our high aspirations may be evidence based, may come from collabration across schools, including Kura Kaupapa Māori and Kura ā Iwi to ensure that the design for learning and inclusion is the very best that it can be.

Added to this, we have made every effort to work with our community, Māori Pasifika and other cultures to ensure that we are working from a strength based position, in partnership with our own people as well as others. Our discussion of academic success can be found in the Analysis of Variance and also in the Assessment section of this Report.

Along with our Manaiakalani Kahui Ako we share the goals of aspiring to make 1.5 academic years progress in each calendar year, for all learners in Reading, Writing and Mathematics.  This is an extremely high aspiration!

We also have goals focused on our tauira having healthy bodies, healthy minds, healthy activity, healthy relationships and healthy kai.

We have definitely made progress against these goals this year, though there is always a lot more to achieve.

2023 saw a wonderfully successful Fiafia, with every child participating in a cultural performance on a large outdoor "mainstage" with approximately 3,000 whānau present. It has also seen large and rich language and culture weeks for Māori, all the Pasafika groups, as well as Myanmar. All of these can be found in our video archive accessed from the school website.

Here is just one of those performances:

18. Senior Samoan Group Fiafia 2023.mp4

Another way our school ensures we are meting the needs of a variety of learners is through our array of special programmes, many of which will be reported on more specifically in this Annual Report Site via their own special page.

Creative Space

Hannah West has done another amazing job in 2023. PENN continues to thrive as a flagship for Learn, Create, Share in our school. Hannah has done a superb job of inspiring both learners and teachers with her various programmes and creativity.  She has kept the relationship with KPMG flourishing and did a fantastic job helping to get our content ready for the Film Festival and then managing all 42 presenters on the day.  Further information about these programmes can be found at the Digital Learning Page and the Extension Programme Page

Hannah will be taking maternity leave in 2024 and our school faces the challenge of finding an apt replacement!

Maker Space

Jackson Vogt has continued in the Maker Space in 2023 and our tauira have been fortunate to have been involved in Garden to Table, 3 D Printing and Robotics, Laser Cutting and Etching, and many more interesting and varied programmes.

For more detailed information about the Maker Programme please visit the Maker Space Programme Report.

Te reo me ona tikanga Maori

Ngakirikiri Kershaw has led  this work in 2023, bringing us two lovely kapa haka troupes as well as leading our te reo me ona tikanga Māori programme. We have been so blessed to have her. As in previous years we have continued with te reo Māori being the language we deliver to our Y7 & Y8's.

We were very pleased to have reconnected with Ngāti Paoa and begun further korero about our partnership aspirations for our kura our community, whānau and tauira.

Thanks so much Kiri!

  Pasfika Success

Thanks to SAlly Va'afusuaga and Sandy Lagitupu for doing an outstanding job of helping our large Pasifika population to celebrate the Pasifika Language Weeks this year. Each week has been well celebrated on the Pt England News Network and supported by live performances of dance and language at Assembly on Fridays. Sandy is still working on setting up an online Niuean Language class for our learners of Niuean heritage.

As mentioned above, we hed an absulolutely oustsanding Fiafia back in March. The weather was kind to us, the food was AMAZING and our children were spectacular. A huge thank-you goes to all the wonderful coaches who enabled us to pull of this fabulous event.

Families @ Pt England

We have been able to hold 8 Families@Pt England meetings, and have had good engagement with very positive whānau.  It has been fun revisiting our goal setting questions and getting feedback from our wonderful community. As always, we will do our very best to deliver on the things our whānau are asking for and this will emerge in our annual plan. 

The Manaiakalani Learn, Create, Share Programme has proven successful for Pasifika and Maori learners, where it is adhered to properly. Our on going commitment to education research with Auckland University and our own R & D Team, means that we have robust metrics for analysing and discussing the success of this work. 

Our Pasifika Fanau engage with us in discussing the children's work both at a parent community layer and at a Board's Forum level as well as with our own school based Boards of Trustees.

Y7/8 Specific Obligations

Technicraft

Our Y7's and Y8's have walked to Tamaki College twice a week for Technicraft. The programme gets evaluated twice yearly and we continue to work with Tamaki College to improve what our children receive. We will continue this programme in 2024. 

Languages

Our whanau/aiga have continued to support our Y7/8 language for direct instruction being te reo Maori. This programme has continued its earlier success and continued to elevate the significance of Maori in our school. Our thanks goes to Whaea Ngakirikiri for her  work in this area. We expect to continue this delivery in 2024

Careers

Our Pt england Alumni have been a real blessin gwith their contributions in this space, presenting to our current students. Thanks to Mrs Nua and Mr Wiseman for their efforts in organising this.

Sports Performance

      With Miss Va'afusuaga "back in the house" our sports programme has cranked up a few notches. We went from 11  up to 14 Netball Teams and were finally able to participate in all the major codes again. It needs to be said that our large Sports Programme is very definitely part of how we express high aspirations for our learners, involve our families and practise inclusion for all comers. It also needs to be said that in all the years of this great sports endeavour we have never had an issue with inclusion of diverse people nor have we had an issue with gender identity.  Thank-you Sally and all coaches and managers for your outstanding work.

For more detail, view the Sport/PE Report in the Programme section of this Review.

Kiwi Sport/Sport Auckland

Sport Auckland helped us to part fund an area wide Sports Co-ordinator. I am very grateful to Chris Herlihy who applied for Tū Manawa funding which we were able to use to pay for Kelly Sports as an approximation of our previous Kiwi Sport programme. We have had excellent service from Kelly Sports and Sally has done a most capable job as the "in school" coordinator. Manaiakalani schools also contributed their Kiwi Sport funding to this programme approach

550 Pt England  students have participated in Kiwi Sport and the school contributed all of its  $7,691.24 Kiwi Sport Funding to the Manaiakalani Sports Cluster Fund to pay Kelly Sports for this delivery. 

Programme Performance

Our Special Programmes are all reported on in detail by the people carrying out that work in the Programme Section of this Review.