Principal’s Notes

QSD Survey – your chance to have your say!

We have just completed our New Zealand Council For Education Research Well Being @School surveys with our students and teachers, with overwhelming affirmation of the things that we do here at Springs/Waiorea.  More detail on this a bit later in this report.

As parents, now it is your turn to tell us how we are doing with the QSD survey, sent out to you separately at the same time as this Newsletter.  Link also inserted here.  QSD stands for Quality of Service Delivery, and as a self reviewing school, we have surveyed our community of parents using this tool every three years since 2005.

It is simple to do on Survey Monkey, covers key aspects you would expect of a high school education, and asks you to rate, on a 10 point scale, how well we do on each aspect here at Springs/Waiorea.  The survey also asks you to rate the importance, in your opinion, of each of the aspects of a well rounded school education.  At the end are 3 open ended questions asking you what pleases you about our school; what you dislike about our school and whether you would recommend Springs/Waiorea to other parents.  Please do take the time to complete the survey so that we have a good snapshot of our service delivery to you.

Well Being@School Survey:

The NZCER administers this survey across NZ, hence we are able to compare how we are doing compared to national averages in each of the measures.  The survey covers:

• School-wide climate and practices
• Teaching and Learning
• Community partnerships
• Pro-social student culture and strategies, and
• Aggressive student culture

I am pleased to report that we have a massive endorsement from our students with regard to our anti aggressive, anti bullying safe school culture.  This is hugely important to me, involves a lot of my time preserving it and buoys me hugely to get this level of affirmation from our students.

Equally our students report that they feel they belong in the school, that people in the school accept them for who they are and that both teachers and students care for each other, that it’s OK to be different to other students, and that they are taught what behaviours are OK and not OK.  Pleasing to note is the respect that teachers have for each other and for the students, as noted by our students.

Huge endorsement too with students reporting that they always feel safe when going to and from school; that their parents, family and whanau always feel welcome at the school and that parents and teachers respect each other.

In the Pro-Social student culture and strategies section there is again overwhelmingly positive support for our practices here with students strongly stating that they know what to do and/or walk away when they feel they are being hassled by others; that students are good at listening to others’ views and ideas; that students look after those who are new to the school and that they can stand up for themselves in a calm way.

These responses closely reflect the values of the school – values that we live each and every day.

As always there are aspects where we could do better, and our students, Springs students after all are happy and willing to tell us this.

Items that stand out for me in this regard are:

• Teachers could ask us for our ideas about how students could get on better with each other.
• Being taught how to better manage feelings if I get angry
• Students including others who are being left out or ignored, and
• Students standing up for others if they are being hassled.

All of these are in the minority (from a survey sample of 550 students), but do deserve some close attention from us.

Moving into the new school and our extended term 2 holiday:

A reminder that the upcoming holiday for our students is extended to 3 weeks to enable us to transfer over to the new school.  The third week is a ‘teacher only week’ where we will familiarise ourselves with the logistics of running this fantastic new teaching environment, as well as unpacking all of the equipment transferred during the first two weeks, from the old school to the new.

The first day of term 3 for Springs/Waiorea students will be Monday July 29th.  More details to come about the logistics of moving 1600 students into this new environment.

Ivan Davis
Principal