Earthquake Update 22 February

Kia ora to you all.

I hope that you and your families are all OK. My thoughts are with all of our Freeville Community.

Thankfully none of our children were hurt physically by today's earthquake. We were able to evacuate the classrooms reasonably quickly and move the children out on to the field. There is no doubt that many of our children were very upset and scared and I have to thank our staff who put their own fears, worries and concerns aside for the children that they were caring for.

Our thanks also to the parents who collected their children as quickly as possible, and remembered to check in with the classroom teachers so that we knew who was going with who. A huge thankyou to those parents who stayed at school for a period of time to comfort children and offer reassurance. The care shown by our adults and by many of the children, both for their peers and the adults around them was very touching. I was very proud of all of our children (and our adults too).

The school itself is a bit of a mess. I should think that the staffroom, admin, library, and rooms 3 - 8 are unoccupiable. The new building and our prefabs (Rooms 13, 14, 15, 16, 17) look okay but with resources scattered throughout.

Please look after yourselves and those around you. I can't see us getting school underway any time soon so listen to the news broadcasts, read the Civil Defence and CCC updates, and we'll do our best to communicate with you as best we can.

Keep safe.

We're Underway

Kia ora koutou

We're well and truly underway for 2011.

Our theme for this year is "The X Factor". This theme gives us a lot of scope to work with the children to develop exciting learning experiences and inquiries in 2011. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this evolves over the year.

Our new Learning Studio looks fantastic and is 95% complete. We are waiting for the site works to be finished and for a few niggles to be sorted on the inside but we're nearly there. We are excited about the learning spaces that have been created and how they support the type of teaching and learning that we are fostering at our school. Please feel free to pop in for a look. We will have an official opening when we have fully completed the project.

One of the initiatives that have been able to take place this year in the Learning Studio is the provision of 'on demand' computing for our Year 7 & 8 students. Essentially every student in Year 7 & 8 has access to their own net book computer. The state of the art wireless and recharging facilities built into the Learning Studio makes this manageable. The net books are certainly adding to the motivation and learning opportunities for our senior students.

What's next? We're never finished! On the plan from now on are the refurbishments needed in Rooms 5-8, revamping of the Dental Clinic (once we have it handed over from the DHB), revamping of the Boiler Room....it doesn't stop! Watch this space.

Whew!

We have had a fantastic last couple of weeks at Freeville School.

Last week I was fortunate enough to join our Year 8's on their Wellington camp. What a great experience. Our Year 8's are truly very fortunate to have an opportunity like this and I have to say that Paul our AP does a tremendous job working with these young people. We are very lucky to have him at our school.

At Capital E the students looked at creating 3D animated online games in their first session and made their own TV News programme in the second. They visited Parilament, Wellington Zoo, Te Papa and the City Gallery. They travelled by plane, bus, train, tram and ferry.

We are very proud of our Year 8 students. They are engaged, polite, grateful and great fun. It was a pleasure to go on camp with them and our three fantastic camp mums.

Today we have our first Freeville Fair for 10 years. What a great community event this is turning out to be. We are very grateful to Rachael and her team for their stirling efforts and to everyone who has supported the fair. I know it will be a great success.

Inform Yourself

For a view from each side of the fence you may want to have a look at the following sites:

http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/National-Standards

http://www.ourprincipals.co.nz/

Otherwise you will get plenty of information if you use Google.

BOT Letter Regarding National Standards

3 November, 2010.

Dear Parents and Caregivers of Freeville School

You may have read in today’s Press about our Board of Trustees’ decision to defer setting targets against the Ministry of Education’s National Standards at the beginning of 2011. The purpose of this letter is to explain our position so that you understand the reasons behind this decision.

We put ourselves forward to become board members because we care about children. We want them to do well, feel that they are able to learn and be successful. We believe in the vision of our school, “Through our example, efforts and encouragement children at Freeville School will be the best that they can be.”

We have a very real concern that the National Standards as they currently exist will harm rather than enhance learning at our school. That they will in fact inhibit a large number of our children from being the best that they can be.

We share the concerns expressed by Professor Martin Thrupp, University of Waikato, Professor John Hattie, University of Auckland,  Professor Terry Crooks, University of Otago  and Lester Flockton, University of Otago, when they wrote the following to the Minister of Education in November last year:

“We are very concerned that the intended National Standards system wrongly assumes that children are failing if they do not meet the standard for their age. This will lead to the repeated labelling of many young children as failures and will be self-fulfilling because it will damage children’s self-esteem and turn them off learning and achieving in literacy and numeracy and other curricula areas. “

Freeville is a fantastic school. The board is reported to and excited about the progress children make in reading, writing, math’s and within inquiry.  We are reported to about the programmes that we have to support all learners and we are extremely proud of the teachers at our school and the work they do. 

 We will:

• Continue to set targets.  These will be aimed at achieving the aspirations that we have developed for our children.
• Let you know, as we have done this year, how we are progressing towards those targets.
• Report to you and talk to you about how your child is doing and let you know how your child is progressing. We will be honest and clear. But we won’t label them as failures.

As a board we realize that we are taking a risk by signing the pledge not to set targets against the National Standards. If worst comes to worst the board could be removed. But we are unable, in good conscience, to support this initiative when the Ministry expects that nationally 40% of Year 8’s will fail to reach the reading standard, and 50% will fail to reach the math’s standard. We feel that this has great potential to be damaging for children.

The board is a group of parents elected to represent you and your children. As always we are happy to discuss this further with anyone who would like more information.

Yours faithfully

Karen Brandon

Chairperson

Board of Trustees

National Standards

In Wednesday’s Press Freeville School was listed as one of 21 schools in Canterbury and 225 schools nationwide (now 240) whose Boards of Trustees had decided to defer setting targets against the national standards at the beginning of 2011.

As a principal, a board member and a parent at Freeville School I support the board’s decision. The Board is developing a letter to our community to explain in brief their thinking and why they have chosen to take this stance.

When considering their own viewpoint I hope that the parents and caregivers of Freeville School will think carefully about what they know about Freeville; our commitment to learning, our desire to do what is best for all the children at our school, and our willingness to take up new ideas and innovations if they are beneficial. If it was all good, we’d be in boots and all.

But it’s not all good, and I personally, as a principal and a parent, have a number of concerns about the standards. Here is just one.

We have been told that standards will address the reported 1 in 5 students who leave New Zealand schools unable to read and write. The bottom 20% of our student population.

We have also been told the standards were developed by working backwards from the performance expectations at NCEA level 2.

I have some questions about that:

1. If we are concerned about identifying the bottom 20%, why develop a reading standard that 40% of Year 8’s are expected to fail to meet?
2. Why have a math’s standard that 50% of Year 8’s are expected to fail to meet?
3. How does this work when 71% of New Zealand students pass NCEA level 2?

To me this doesn’t make sense.

The problem is that standards are set at a level where they are not in fact standards but goals that we would all love children to get to. There is a difference. To me a standard is a level that all children should reach, and if they don’t we should be concerned. This is not the case with the national standards.

We have been told that the standards will be reviewed and may be adjusted. Too late for those children and parents who may have been told incorrectly that their child is failing. At Freeville School we work very hard to get every child to believe that he/she can learn and that they can be successful. This is hard enough without telling them twice a year that they are below an untrialled national standard.  

The GPC

Greetings to you all.

At present I am on the beautiful Waiheke Island attending a conference for a small group of principals from throughout New Zealand. There are 13 principals here and we all have to present to the group about what is happening at our schools and share some cool ideas that others might use.

I have chosen to share with these principals some of the things that we are doing in our junior school. In particular ideas like the Starting School Packs, the Starting School Soon Party, the first and second Word books, the amount of parent involvement we get in our junior school and so on.

Sometimes we take the things happening within our school for granted. We shouldn't though. I am constantly amazed by the work the teachers at Freeville do. They think outside the square and are solution focussed. We are very fortunate to have an innovative and imaginative staff, and I am always reminded of that when I share with other principals.