Proposed Enrolment Scheme changes for Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto
Tēnā koutou,
The Ministry of Education has requested under section 11H of the Education Act 1989 that Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto changes its enrolment home zone to manage our growing school roll and our building capacity.
The reason for this is to ensure that schools can manage the numbers of students attending our kura and ensure an equitable spread of students between schools. Before amending our enrolment zone we are required to consult with our students, parents and local community, with parents of prospective students of Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto and with the Boards of other local schools that may be affected by the amendment.
Because of the significant crossover of our current enrolment home zones, we are working collaboratively with St Martins School and Thorrington School to develop our proposed amendments to our enrolment home zones. This will allow our schools and the Ministry of Education to effectively manage the capacity of our schools, both for now and the future.
With the support of a Ministry appointed liaison and after some discussions with the boards of other impacted schools, we have drafted a proposed amendment based on student data supplied by the Ministry of Education. A description and map of the proposed amendment can be accessed on our website. In the description are details of the proposed interim arrangements for families whose address is currently in the home zone but is sitting outside of the proposed new home zone.
Please note that ALL children currently enrolled at the school will continue to have the right of ongoing enrolment.
To help us develop our submission to the Ministry of Education, we specifically invite your feedback on:
Whether you are supportive of the boundaries in the proposed amendment;
Suggested changes you may have to the proposed amendment boundaries;
The reason(s) for your suggested change(s);
Any other comments
Please note that the Ministry of Education has determined that our enrolment home zone does need to be reduced as a result of this process, so that our school can adequately meet in-zone growth, therefore leaving the boundaries as they currently are is not a viable option.
We invite your feedback on our proposed enrolment home zone amendment (attached) by Friday, 3 rd April 2020. Please send your written feedback to our liaison person, Tom Scollard, c/o Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto, 71 Sandwich Road, Beckenham, Christchurch 8023 or email him at tom@tomscollard.co.nz. If you have any questions you can contact Tom via email, or speak with Sandy or Ester at school.
We will carefully consider all responses, before submitting our final proposed amendment to the Ministry of Education for their consideration and processing.
An estimated timeline for implementation of the amended enrolment scheme would likely be for the beginning of Term 1, 2021.
Ngā mihi,
Ester Vallero Board Chair
Sandy Hastings Principal - Tumuaki
On behalf of Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto Board of Trustees
To access the maps, description of the proposed enrolment zone changes, and FAQs, visit our school website.
What a great week it has been, seeing everyone back at school. What's hard to believe is that we are into the second month of the year already! Our thoughts have been with our friends and the communities of Southland over the past few days. One of our past staff, Rebekah Stoop is now teaching in Tapanui and when I spoke to her on Wednesday they were on their second day of being closed due to the flooding. Not the way that you want to start the school year!
Staff update:
It is with great regret that I have to advise that Paulette Newton will be finishing her tenure at Beckenham at the end of Term 1. Paulette has been a member of the staff at Beckenham for many years, in both full-time and part-time capacities, and currently is the Team Leader of the Kōwhai Team.
Paulette has been successful in winning a position with the RTLB (Resource Teachers of Behaviour and Learning) Service where she will be able to both utilise and continue to grow her expertise in supporting diverse learners, not just in one school but in many schools. Whilst we are extremely sad to be losing Paulette to our staff, we are very excited for her and the new challenges and growth that she has ahead of her. As a member of the Beckenham Community, and a parent of a child in the school, we know that she won't be a stranger to us. The position of Team Leader is currently advertised, and we will keep you updated when we have new information about this.
Health Curriculum Review - meeting Mon 17th Feb, 2:30pm
At the end of 2019 we circulated information about our current Health Curriculum review. Thank you to those people who have already engaged with this. We promised to recirculate this at the start of the year, and to also provide a time that you could come and talk with us about it. We will be holding a meeting on Monday 17th February from 2:30-3pm in the staffroom and invite you to attend.
The review material can be accessed via this link, and we will be going over this and discussing it at the meeting.
Annual Donations
Earlier this week you should have received a special newsletter from the Board of Trustees about the new annual donation request. You can find a copy of that information on our website if you need it. Please note that we will NOT be requesting further donations from you this year (except for Camps) and plan to budget and work with the single, annual donation requested for each child. We appreciate whatever contribution you feel that your whānau can make towards supporting the rich educational experiences that we aim to provide for our children's learning.
School Website
Our server is being upgraded this weekend, so the school website will be offline from 4pm today until 9am Monday morning.
Ngā mihi nui Sandy Hastings Principal - Tumuaki
Important Dates
Upcoming Events
Fri 14 Feb - Celebration Assembly, 11- 11:30am in the hall. All welcome. Mon 17 Feb - Health Curriculum Review Meeting in the staffroom 2:30 - 3pm Mon 17 Feb - Fri 28 Feb - Life Education Bus at Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto Sat 23 Feb - Weetbix Tryathlon, co-ordinated by the PTA Wed 26 Feb - PTA Meeting. 7:30 - 9:30pm Thu 27 Feb - Years 5 - 8 School Swimming Event at Wharenui Swimming Pool. 12 - 3pm Thu 27 Feb - Board of Trustees meeting 5:30 - 7:30pm Fri 28 Feb - Celebration Assembly, 11- 11:30am in the hall. All welcome. Sun 1 Mar - Beckenham Outdoor Spaces Working Bee. 8:30am - 1:00pm Wed 11 Mar - Zone Swimming Sports - qualifiers only - more details to come Fri 13 Mar - School Duathlon (Y5-8) Beckenham Park - 1:15-3pm Fri 20 Mar - TWIGHLIGHT FAIR! from 4:30pm
Elsie, what a stunning role model you are! You strive to do your very best in all situations and show our school values in all you do. You willingly help those around you to achieve their best and we love the focussed and persistent way you approach any challenge or learning task. You regularly take on extra responsibilities and can be relied upon to fulfil these a high standard. You are a star, Elsie, and we are so proud of you. Tino pai!
School Notices
Allergies
Across our school, we have several children with different food allergies. To support the wellbeing of these students, we have the following guidelines in place which we ask you to follow:
For 2020, we have no specifically excluded foods. As always, we ask that no child shares their food with another, due to the anaphylactic risk for some our students. Whenever children bring food to school for shared kai occasions, please follow the guidelines provided by the teachers for that event.
We will inform you during the year if specific guidelines for your child’s hub change. If you have any questions or concerns, please discuss them in the first instance with your child’s homeroom teacher.
Playground Update
Our playspace is beginning to take shape thanks to The Greenscape team. The double slide is sitting in the Library ready to be installed on the mound. The concrete river is flowing nicely with some natural rocks to be placed throughout. The digger has been in for the past couple of days getting ready to extend the sandpit, and extra drainage will be in place before our sensory play area is finished. Later in the term, we will need a little help from our children and community with the planting of a few hundred trees and shrubs before our official opening day.
We are all looking forward to having a play (including all the teachers!)
Smart Watches
We have had a number of queries this week from whānau about Smart Watches. We are aware that the availability of these is increasing and that children may have been given one that was intended to come to school. Because Smart Watches have the ability to be 'connected devices' they come under our cybersafety guidelines which were published and discussed at Learning Conferences. Whilst some of you may not have activated the 'connected' features of your child's Smart Watch, teachers are not able to make individual dispensations for these devices. We prefer that these devices stay at home, however, if you need your child to bring them to school so that you can contact them after school, then, like cell phones, they need to be handed in to the office at the start of each day, and collected at 3pm.
Thank you for your understanding and support in this matter.
CSM Outreach Band Programme
... starts this coming Wednesday, 12th February! 8am Training Band - in the hall, with your instrument and book. 3pm - Concert Band - in the hall, with your instrument and book(s). Our new CSM Outreach Band co-ordinator is Jody Keehan, and she will be making contact with all enrolled students over the next couple of days. If you have any queries, or haven't heard from her and you think you should have, please email her at outreachband@csm.org.nz
School Policies - Concerns and Complaints
It is always our goal to work with you to resolve any concerns before they reach the 'complaint' stage, and it is also important that our processes are transparent for you to follow. You can access all of our School Policy documents through the 'SchoolDocs' website by entering the username: 'beckenham' and password: 'pride' (all lower case) and searching for either 'Concerns' or 'Complaints'. You can also see a simple flowchart of the process below (also available on the SchoolDocs site:
Uniform and belongings
Some uniform reminders:
Please do ensure that children come to school in full uniform each day. This means black on the bottom (other than the checked skorts) and red on the top, or the dress. On Fridays, children have the option of wearing the House shirts (available from the office for $25). If you don't have enough uniform for children to have 'one on and one in the wash', please remember that our second-hand uniform shop, run by our PTA has very cheap and good quality uniform items available. Hats are compulsory in Terms 1 & 4 when children go outside. Please ensure that they have a hat at school each day.
Please name all uniform and belongings
It's barely the end of week 1 and the lost property is beginning to accumulate! PLEASE make sure that all of your child's belongings (uniform items, hat, lunchbox, drink bottle) are ALL clearly named so that they can be returned to your child rather than ending up in the lost property.
Student Health & Wellbeing
Our review of Health and Wellbeing teaching is underway. If you have not yet contributed your feedback and would like to do so, please go to this link before the 12/02/2020. - We also welcome interested whānau to attend a Community Consultation session on our Health and Wellbeing teaching, to be held in the Staffroom on Monday 17/2/2020 at 2.30pm. Click here to view the new Health and Wellbeing section of our website for parents. It is packed with useful links, information and YouTube clips you can watch with your child. Parenting resources from the Canterbury Mental Health Group Alright?: Handy tipsheets on sleep, helping children manage worry, helping children keep calm and lots more.
PTA News
Let the Countdown to the Fair Begin!! 6 weeks today!
Mark your calendars - Friday 20th March 2020 will be our Twilight Fair. Let's showcase our new playground & celebrate with our community!
Calling all Artists, Musicians, business owners & generous souls…..We are on the hunt for donations of prizes, vouchers, cash, food, services & acts to help us to create an amazing Twilight Fair.
All funds raised from the Twilight Fair will go towards much needed new school sports uniforms and for purchasing digital technology equipment such as beebots and spheros for our children to learn coding concepts and how to program robots so that they can become creators of digital technology - not just users.
Thanks to wonderful Gail Harris from Platform Design Ltd for our fabulous poster design.
BOT Update
Enrolment Zone Update
The final documentation is being prepared in readiness for consultation on the proposed enrolment zone amendments for St Martins, Thorrington and Beckenham schools. This documentation is expected to be sent out to you no later than Monday 14th February.
Community Notices
(Notices placed here are contingent on space and do not reflect the views or opinions of the school.)
Mindfulness for Children
Does your child struggle with anxiety or stress? Would you like to support them to learn skills to enhance their wellbeing?
The Psychology Centre is offering Pause Breathe Smile (PBS) a group for children (age 8-11 years) who struggle with stress and anxiety and their parents to develop skills of mindfulness. PBS is an evidence-based program, developed by the Mental Health Foundation, found to improved focus and attention, enhance self-awareness and reduced stress. Our recent pilot group at the Psychology Centre also found that PBS is effective at reducing anxiety and improving coping in children.
The group will run from 4 - 5pm, starting Wednesday 19 February for 8 weeks at the Psychology Centre, University of Canterbury and requires both child and parent/ caregiver to attend and learn together. The cost of the program is $125.
Supporting the cost of your child(ren)’s education in 2020
Kia ora e te whānau
In New Zealand we are told we have a ‘free education system’. Whilst, in theory, that sounds amazing, in reality, schools rely significantly on families’ contributions to enable them to offer a rich and broad curriculum to students.
We acknowledge these contributions have an impact on your family’s finances and really appreciate your help in funding your children’s education. In the past, we have asked you for a $60 annual donation per student at the beginning of the year, plus a contribution each time we organised activities, plus your contribution to the costs of running overnight camps. Activities include the costs of swimming, visiting speakers to the school, trips, transport for school cultural and school sports events, some software licences, and so on.
This year, the Board of Trustees have decided to try a different approach. We are going to ask you for a flat donation of $150 per child, for all trips and activities. This approach is based on the new government scheme (2019) for Decile 1 to 7 schools which, as a Decile 8 school, we are not eligible to receive because the government believes that Decile 8-10 communities will receive this funding and more from their whānau and community.
The only other separate request we’ll be asking you (Y5-8 whānau) for, will be for overnight camps (Y5/6 every second year, and Y7/8 annually) which are impossible to fund from the $150 request and still offer all of the other rich curriculum options.
For most families, the amount we ask per year will be close to the same, or less than it was last year. The big difference will be that we will not be asking you contributions frequently during the year, activity by activity, and you will be able to budget your family’s school costs from the start of the year. It will also make it simpler for our staff to budget and account for funds coming in as well, and our administrative costs will also be significantly reduced, resulting in more savings.
You can pay in full, in instalments, or set up a regular automatic payment which would need to be:
weekly $3 per child = $156 /yr ($6 per Y5-8 child if you want to pay for most of camp across the year
fortnightly $5.75 per child = $149.50 /yr ($10-$12 per Y5-8 child if you want to pay for most of camp across the year)
monthly $12.50 per child = $150 /yr ($25 per Y5-8 child if you want to pay for most of camp across the year)
To set up an automatic payment, please copy the school’s bank account number: 12-3148-0131641-00 into your internet banking and use your child’s name as the reference. Please set up a separate payment for each child.
As the costs of camps are not known until closer to the time, budgeting for $150 per camp is a good guide. More detailed cost information will be sent out closer to the time.
Please note that uniform, stationery, the take-home component of Technology (South intermediate charge), and optional activities such as mini ball, music lessons, etc have always been, and will still be, chargeable (goods and services) and need to be paid in full before the activity takes place.
You can claim your school donation from IRD as part of the 33.3% tax credit each financial year, making the real cost of the donation only $100 per child if you claim this back. These donations can be claimed for up to 3 years previous years, so please contact Sandra Rauch by emailing accounts@beckenham.school.nz if you would like a tax receipt for previous years.
Thank you all for continuing to support the education of our tamariki.
How lovely it has been to see everyone back at school today!
There are a couple of important events happening this week that we needed to let you know about, hence the brief newsletter today.
There will also be a fuller newsletter coming out this Friday.
Please remember to contact your child's home group teacher, in the first instance, if you have any questions or wonderings about anything that is happening with your child's learning.
Our staff had a very full and exciting week last week with three days of Professional learning and then the two days of learning conferences. All of which was part of our preparation for the start of the school year, and for the children to arrive today.
Remember all children need a named school hat at school every day, please
Ngā mihi nui Sandy and the team
Important Dates for this week
CSM Blow Test - Tuesday (tomorrow) 4th February 2:30-3:45pm This is the final opportunity to bring your child along to try out an instrument to learn this year as part of CSM Training Band programme. This is for students from Year 5-8 and there are still places available for students who want to learn Trumpet, Trombone, Saxophone, Flute and Clarinet.
Thursday 6th February - Waitangi Day - School Closed. Welcome Assembly and Morning Tea - Friday 7th Feb 9:15 - 9:30am Come to the foyer for a cuppa and a snack either before or after the Welcome Assembly and meet other families in the school. This is a great opportunity for new families to make contact with other parents too.
A reminder that if you or any member of your household has been in China during the holidays, you need to keep your child at home for the next 14 days. Please contact me immediately if you need to discuss this or have any queries about this.
The latest update from the Ministry of Education (2/2/2020)
“The Government is placing temporary entry restrictions into New Zealand on all foreign nationals travelling from, or transiting through mainland China to assist with the containment of the novel coronavirus and to protect New Zealand and the Pacific Islands from the disease.
This will take effect from tomorrow and will be in place for up to 14 days. This position will be reviewed every 48 hours.
Any foreign travellers who leave or transit through mainland China after 2 February 2020 (NZ time) will be refused entry to New Zealand.
Any foreign travellers in transit to New Zealand on 2 February 2020 will be subject to enhanced screening on arrival but, pending clearance, will be granted entry to New Zealand.
New Zealand citizens and permanent residents returning to New Zealand will still be able to enter, as will their immediate family members, but will be required to self-isolate for 14 days on arrival back in the country.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has also raised its travel advice to New Zealanders for all of mainland China to “Do not travel”, the highest level.”
The Ministry of Education, TEC, and NZQA are working together and we will provide you with information over the next couple of days regarding the Government’s announcement. In the meantime please contact TEC, NZQA or the Ministry of Education with any questions or concerns. We will keep our websites updated.
Please continue to refer to the Ministry of Health website for health advice and the latest information:
Everyone’s health and wellbeing, including international students’, is important to us. While there are no confirmed or suspected cases in New Zealand at the moment, the Ministry of Health continues to encourage a precautionary approach and a focus on good hygiene. Please err on the side of caution and be alert, not alarmed.
BOT Update
There will be a separate information sheet coming out later today from the Board about our new requests for school donations process.
Community Notices
(Notices placed here are contingent on space and do not reflect the views or opinions of the school.)
Play Football throughout 2020 at Halswell United AFC.
The registrations for the Winter Season 2020 are OPEN Club Trials are underway. Make sure you don’t miss out being selected for a team! Just head to our website for more information and to register: http://www.hawkfootball.org.nz/Register
"Focus on kids" - heaps of activities including a mobile farm where children can get "hands on experience". A special demonstration by GB volunteer Fire Brigade as well as music, food, cream teas and a variety of stalls and exhibitions.
Given recent developments, associated media coverage and the return of students to school, it is important to convey accurate information to our school community. We are guided by both the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health.
Any staff member or student who may be at risk of exposure because they or a member of their household has recently been to China or has been in close contact with someone confirmed with the virus, the staff member or the student is to delay the start of their school year for 14 days and stay away until 12 February, or two weeks after the date of their arrival into New Zealand.
Anyone who is unwell should not be at school. Please contact Healthline at 0800 611 116 or your GP for medical advice. Healthline has translators and interpreters available 24/7 in 150 languages. They have Mandarin and Cantonese speaking staff available.
We will keep you updated if and when further information comes to hand.
