Edendale Primary School

Board of Trustees Newsletter Term Two 2013

Welcome to the new Board

Nga mihi o te tau hou ki a koutou! It is fitting that we welcome in the new Board of Trustees, in the month of Matariki, the Maori New Year. As you have been notified via the school newsletter, we have three new parent trustees, Catherine Oxenham, Carolyn Bielby and Gregor Paul, along with two returning parent trustees – John Marsh and myself (Khylee Quince). We also welcome Ritesh Chand (teacher in Room 26) as the new staff trustee. On 22 June we held our first meeting as a new board, at which I was re-elected as Chairperson.

We thank our outgoing parent trustees Mike Maitland and Roshyn Singh, for their time and expertise given to the Board over the past three years.

In this newsletter we will give an update on current and future projects in the school, and the possible implications for the school of the review of decile ratings following the census.

Outdoor Works

In our last newsletter, we outlined our plans to undertake some major outdoor improvements, including playground resurfacing, laying of astro-turf and providing covered areas in various places in the school. We have commissioned drawings of how this may look – these are in the foyer outside the main office – go and have a look at them when you have a chance. The project will be done in stages, with the main playground area our first priority. At our last meeting we resolved to have the project costed, so we can move forward with financial planning for the works, including making applications for external funding proposals.

School Hall

Remedial work on the school hall, including replacement of the roof, is

currently on hold, following a less than satisfactory tender process conducted by the MOE. Last year the school was advised that our contribution to the project would be a maximum of $65,000. The MOE put the project out to tender, and without consulting the school (which owns 46% of the building), selected a tender for just over $1 million, with the school liable for $200,000. The Board has written to the MOE requesting an explanation for the significant increase in cost. We have requested closer engagement with their property personnel to ensure all processes are inclusive and consultative so that we can make well-informed decisions.

School Pool

At our June meeting we resolved to purchase heat pumps and solar blankets for the school pools, which will heat the water to a comfortable 28 degrees. This will allow us to have the pools available for swimming for all of Terms 1 and 4 each year. In addition, we agreed to open the pools up for the use of our school families after school, during weekends and school holidays during the summer months. Families will be able to purchase a seasonal access pass for use during these times, when the pool will be supervised. We have investigated a number of ways other schools open their pools to their own communities and hope that school families will be able to enjoy this facility over the

summer months. More details will be available later in the year.

New Building Last week we had some excellent news from the MOE, who have agreed to provide us with a new building to replace the current year three/four block, which is leaking and near the end of its life. The new 7 or 8 classroom block will cost $2.2 million dollars, with a significant contribution made by the school from our five year MOE property funding. Over the next few weeks, members of the Board and senior management will be visiting other Auckland schools which have recently completed classroom blocks, to see what we might like to be incorporated into our project design. Requests for proposals and a tender process are likely to occur within months, with construction hopefully beginning before the end of the year. During the construction period, the school will locate temporary classrooms on the asphalt courts on the lower Scout Den field.

Decile Rating and Funding

As you may know, each school in New Zealand is allocated a decile rating, which accounts for around 10% of a school’s MOE funding. A school's decile indicates the extent to which the school draws its students from low socio-economic communities. Decile 1 schools are the 10% of schools with the highest proportion of students from low socio-economic communities, whereas decile 10 schools are the 10% of schools with the lowest proportion of these students. A school's decile does not indicate the overall socio-economic mix of the school.

Decile ratings are reviewed following each census, based upon data collated in relation to that census period. Ratings are calculated on the basis of five criteria: Household income - the percentage of households with equivalent income (ie adjusted for the number of adults and children in the household and the age of the children) in the lowest 20% nationally. Households with a member who is employed are usually not included in this group nor are all households supported by a benefit (since more than 20% of families are dependent on a benefit). Occupation - the percentage of employed parents in occupations that are at skill levels 4 or 5 (of the 1 to 5 levels of the Australia and New Zealand Standard Classification of

Occupations ANZSCO). These include all labourers, all machine operators and assemblers, and others who work in occupations at these lower skill levels irrespective of the sector/ type/ profession involved. Household crowding – the percentage of households with an equivalised crowding index greater than one. This index is the proportion of household members per bedroom adjusted for the presence of children under 10 years of age, every two of whom are assigned to share a bedroom; couples, and others are each assigned their own bedroom. Educational qualifications - the percentage of parents with no tertiary or school qualifications. Income support - the percentage of parents who directly (i.e. not as a partner) received a Domestic Purposes Benefit, Unemployment Benefit or Sickness and Invalid's Benefit in the previous year. This does not include parents receiving Family Support.

The MOE does not have access to the individual census information of school families, only the information for families with school aged children in the community as a whole which it accesses in confidence through Statistics New Zealand.

Schools are ranked in relation to every other school for each of the five factors and receive a score

according to the percentile that they fall into. The five scores for each school are added together (without any weightings) to give a total. This total gives the overall standing of a school in relation to all other schools in the country, enabling the ministry to place schools into ten groups called deciles, each having the same number of schools.

Edendale is currently a decile 5 ranked school, and we consequently receive decile related funding that is tagged to Targeted Funding for Education Achievement and Special Education. Several demographic trends over the past six years in our school community are likely to influence an increase in our decile rating. These include the setting and enforcing of our school zone, the significant rise in Sandringham house prices and the recent sale of many Housing New Zealand properties within our school zone. By our calculations, if Edendale was to have a revised decile rating of 6, this would mean a drop of around $15,000 funding per year. If our rating was to increase to decile 7, our income drop would be around $28,000. While it is important to recognise that decile ratings do not reflect the quality of education offered at a school, a loss of funding will be difficult to absorb in our budget, and may place pressure on the school to increase donations and fundraising efforts. The MOE has stated that the new ratings will be

advised next year, to take effect in funding allocations from 2015.

As always you are welcome to come along to any of the public Board meetings to see what we do. Enjoy the school holidays and we’ll see you back for Term Three. Khylee Quince Chairperson John Marsh, Carolyn Bielby, Gregor Paul, Catherine Oxenham (Parent Trustees), Ritesh Chand (Staff Trustee) Rosemary Vivien (Principal)