SCHOOL STATEMENT Term 1 2024

The location of our school is rural, situated 12 kilometres from Balclutha in a setting of rolling farmland. 

Our School has students who come from rural areas, in and around Warepa. However, over the years our school community has changed a lot and many parents from Balclutha are choosing our school for the advantages of a smaller rural school for their children’s education. We have a variety of farm types in Warepa - Sheep, deer, crop and forestry with three established dairy farm units. Some of the farms are still the original family farms with family members having attended Warepa School themselves. The wider community remains very invested in our school and are supportive of our learners and their learning. 

Warepa School was established in 1858.

The school has modern buildings, originally built in 1983 all buildings have been modernised. The school is situated in a very attractive setting surrounded by mature oak trees, large grassy playing fields, a turfed multi-sport court, a basketball court, a fitness track and adventure playground.

We are a three-teacher school with a current roll of 54 in term 1 2024 and a projected new entrant roll this year of 5 students. The Board recognises the value of staff being able to support the learners with small class sizes. This is one of the benefits of our rural school along with a very supportive family type atmosphere. 

The Board employs three teacher’s aides to support our students. We have a trained Reading Recovery Teacher on staff, this is a real asset for our school. We maintain a stable teaching teams in all classes for our pupils, with our relievers being an integral part of our teaching teams.

Our Junior Class teacher runs a transition to school programme for our preschoolers. ’Warepa Wonders’ It is designed to help bridge the gap between pre-school and primary school. The aim is to increase the readiness of our pre school children and their families.

It focuses on

 -Emotional readiness
-Social routines
-Organisation and manipulative skills
-Gross and fine motor skills
-Early language and numeracy knowledge

Warepa School enjoys the support of their parents and the wider community. The school is the focus of the community and the pride of many. The parents and community are included in various school activities such as inquiry learning units, Enviro Clubs,  sports coaching and refereeing, teaching swimming groups, attending camps, school productions, support in the classrooms, gardening, assistance in the library, fundraising and a variety of other opportunities.
The Warepa School Support Group provides tremendous assistance by fundraising for major purchases that are outside the normal school budget. The group also fundraises weekly by providing school lunches each Friday. They are also extremely supportive of teacher’s requests for equipment to support the curriculum programmes and major projects undertaken by the Board.

Warepa is a very well resourced school with the latest reading and library material, excellent information communication technology (apple laptops and iPads, chrome books, apple TV and large mobile TV’s in each room). We use Acer R11 Chromebooks and ipads as tools for the children to access the curriculum. We have 1-1 devices across the school, iPads and chrome books. We have a portal where parents can purchase the approved devices (Acer R11 Chromebook). The BYOD opportunity has been well supported by the parents over the years. We are using Google Apps for Education as a platform for digital learning and Hapara Teacher Dashboard that provides a highly flexible platform for our teachers to efficiently create activities with learning pathways based on student needs and interests. Hapara helps our Teachers to more easily view and guide student progress throughout their learning process, it makes learning visible and teachers can provide formative timely feedback as it’s needed.

The Board  funds learning support and extension programmes, the delivery of these can vary, depending on the student’s needs and the available budget. We provide opportunities for our gifted and talented students such as:

Participating in the Otago University Problem Solving Challenge, NZ Exams , attending the National Young Leaders Conference annually, student leaders in physical activity, future focussed skill development and digital learning opportunities, school productions and other opportunities as they arise.

The staff participates in professional development in line with our school’s strategic plan and Ministry direction  to maintain a high standard of curriculum delivery and effective classroom teaching. A school-wide approach provides a focused, supportive learning environment for the teachers.

Our school belongs to the Big River KaHui Ako, (Community of Learning) with 12 Big River Learning Cluster Schools. Our vision is to ‘raise student achievement through developing engaged active life long learners’. This will be achieved by enhancing effective teaching practice, growing leadership, innovation and creating strong connections between students, whānau, schools/centres and the wider community. We work in a very high trust and collaborative environment with an overall inquiry question “What enables and accelerates student achievement?”

We are in our third year of using a Structured Literacy approach in spelling and reading. (A structured literacy approach provides: explicit, systematic, and sequential teaching of literacy at multiple levels – phonemes, letter–sound relationships, syllable patterns, morphemes, vocabulary, sentence structure, paragraph structure, and text structure) We were also involved in Assessment for Learning in 2023 and Maths Professional development in 2023 and 2024.

The school has Literacy, Numeracy, Languages and Science Lead Teachers who attend ongoing development with the Principal, and lead development and change at the school level. The Principal provides opportunities for involvement in Professional Development for all staff; teaching, non- teaching and also regular relieving staff.
The staff have developed strong digital fluency and are successfully using digital learning tools to support the teaching and learning of the students in their care. We are using Google Apps for Education as the main tool in the classrooms; this has promoted student engagement and connected students to their learning.

Our school promotes the ‘Warepa Learner’ dispositions. They are embedded into the daily life of our learners at Warepa School.
✓  THINK ✓  CONNECT ✓  CREATE ✓  SELF AWARE ✓  DETERMINED 

The teachers involve the students to create a positive learning environment where all the children are valued and encouraged to be the best they can be. There is a very strong family atmosphere within the school and this is a special feature which supports the children when taking risks and accepting challenges in the learning process. Communication is open between the school and home. With the open-door policy at our school the parents find the staff extremely approachable.

The children are involved in stimulating, real life learning situations with the children achieving very high standards. Some examples are pupils attending: The Year 7 and 8 Rotary Speech Competitions, participating in the NZ Spelling, Writing, Maths, English, Computer and Science exams and gifted and talented competitions. Many of our students have participated with success in these competitions achieving some distinctions, merits and credits. Our children are very motivated to participate in these extra curricular activities and challenge themselves.

Our school is fortunate to have motivated and conscientious staff that constantly strive to provide a wide range and balance of learning experiences in an interesting and challenging way. Our school promotes inclusiveness, providing a range of sporting and cultural opportunities for all children. Over the past twenty  years the school has presented an end of year production to our local and wider community. The standard has been very high and is an enjoyable way to celebrate the arts and our student’s talents. In recent times the production has moved to become a bi annual event. The students have also been performing their productions for the elderly and early childhood centres of the South Otago District and gain much satisfaction from sharing their dramatic and musical talents.

Our school Board have identified goals through their strategic plan and over the years have undertaken many major property projects such as:
▪  Building of a new block (multi purpose room, a new library, principal’s office and reception area) completed 2023.
▪  Building a new senior class (a modern learning environment) and staffroom
▪  Developing new playground / sandpit and fitness track bike and scooter tracks, bike shed, tunnel house, and basketball hoops.
▪  Redeveloped the tennis court and resurfaced it with tiger turf and upgraded the netball, basketball and tennis poles and nets. The court is an asset that can be enjoyed by the wider community.
▪  Redeveloped the Junior and Middle classrooms - Modern Learning Environments - completed in 2020
▪  In 2018 our school boundary has been fenced, the bathroom facilities upgraded and we have had a new septic system installed.
▪  Projects have been identified to further enhance our indoor and outdoor learning environments. 

We are an enviro school and have been involved in Riparian Planting in our Warepa District.
Warepa School is a very supportive, motivating place for the children to be. 

Due to roll growth in 2008 the Ministry of Education required that we implement an Enrolment Scheme in our school, this is still in place. The roll numbers in the Senior Class are such that the roll is closed for that class in 2024 to students outside the zone.

Teaching and learning at Warepa School is a partnership between the teachers, children and their parents and the wider community.