{"id":6889,"date":"2018-08-03T17:55:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-03T05:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beckenham.school.nz\/?guid=32aeceac6afb1da79d189d56bebfe936"},"modified":"2018-08-03T17:55:53","modified_gmt":"2018-08-03T05:55:53","slug":"beckenham-te-kura-o-puroto-newsletter-3-august-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beckenham.school.nz\/index.php\/newsletters\/beckenham-te-kura-o-puroto-newsletter-3-august-2018\/6889","title":{"rendered":"Beckenham Te Kura o P\u016broto Newsletter 3 August 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

Principal's Patch<\/h2>

Kia ora wh\u0101nau<\/h3>
Thank you to the people who replied to our last newsletter offering help with our special lunchtime programmes.  We appreciate all your support.

This term we have started utilising our exciting, new Treemendous area.

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The children are able to utilise the area in class time with their teacher or an adult, and on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at break times when we have duty teachers monitoring the area.

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It has been exciting watching our Treemendous wardens take care of the area and the children who play there, offering information about the plants and how we can play in this wonderful area.  The large \u201cnests\u201d have become pirate ships, balance beams in a circus, a dance arena and a place for fairies to rest.

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The area is also rich with intriguing creatures which the children can observe and discuss.

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Kindest regards

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Sue Leadbetter
Acting Principal<\/span>

Kia ora wh\u0101nau<\/h4>I\u2019m writing this from Adelaide where I\u2019m currently shadowing the principal of Lockleys North Primary School. I am feeling very privileged to have this opportunity to meet so many dedicated Australian educators, teachers, support staff and principals, who have all been welcoming, generous with their time and keen to share with me their practice and passion for teaching and learning. It's exciting to see so many similarities between our schools, the beliefs that we share about how children learn, and what authentic, 21st Century teaching and learning needs to look like to successfully equip our learners for the future.

What has surprised me is the difference in the resourcing that schools here get, compared to what we are expected to work with in New Zealand. All teachers here get an hour of classroom release for planning EVERY DAY and they get additional release each term to carry out assessment tasks. Like our teachers, they still take their work home to finish in the evenings and weekends. Children who are English as second language learners are put into classes with a ratio of one teacher to 15 children, that are dedicated to teaching them English for the first three years of their schooling, regardless of their starting year level, before they are transitioned to their local school into a mainstream class. Schools here have dedicated learning support teachers who are able to work individually and with groups of children with diverse learning needs. Students with high behaviour and\/or learning needs have access to significantly more teacher aide and specialist teacher support. Teachers are expected to go to training workshops that are run and funded by their Department of Education, during school hours (as opposed to after school or in the holidays). After 10 years, a teacher is entitled to take nearly 10 weeks of long-service leave, and the pay scales here for teachers are at least 30% higher than ours in NZ.

In voting to go on strike on August 15th, our primary teaching profession is asking to be properly resourced and funded to do the work that they are expected to do. This is not simply about pay - it is about the quality of education that we want to be able to provide for our children.

The OECD has warned that our teachers are paid ten percent less than other New Zealanders with similar levels of skills and experience, and we're paid much less than many of our peers overseas. NZ teachers have got some of the highest workloads, biggest classes, and lowest pay of any teachers in the developed world (OECD Education at a Glance, 2017<\/a>).

In New Zealand we have a serious crisis occurring. We have young teachers leaving the profession in droves and a large percentage of our aging profession heading towards retirement. We have fewer numbers entering teacher training and many of those who graduate are not staying in the profession beyond their first two to four years. In parts of New Zealand, schools cannot get experienced, quality teachers when they advertise positions. Even in Christchurch, where a teaching advertisement 10 years ago would have typically attracted over 50 quality, experienced applicants, we would now be lucky now to get five.

Our students with diverse and complex learning needs are not getting the in-class support and access to expert professionals (resource teachers of literacy, psychologists, behaviour therapists, speech language therapists, etc.) that they need and deserve. Teacher aide funding to schools has always been insufficient and has been continuously eroded over the years.

The wellbeing of our profession has been being eroded and undermined for years and we cannot sustain this any longer. The ones who ultimately suffer are our children who are expected to thrive in  a system that is not being resourced to meet their diverse and complex needs. By taking industrial action, we are asking for more resourcing for our education system: