Kia ora ,

Each term around this time (after the second scheduled Board meeting) you will receive this email — a summary of what your School Board has been spending time on.

Each of the board members has taken the lead for a particular element of the school’s governance. The current subcommittees are:

Achievement and Wellbeing — Belinda/Stuart

Health, Safety and Risk — Belinda/Stuart

Finance — Kate

Strategic Direction — Elsamari

Property — Sean

Policies — Jimmy

Community — Brigit

Communication — Stuart

Not sure who the board members are? Find them here.

The Board wants to acknowledge the dedicated efforts of our teaching staff, particularly for their commitment (and courage!) to their professional development for our Maths programme. 

The school is beginning to see some significant results of this work — all our tamariki (children) will benefit. 

Bravo!

We are part of the Ministry of Education Canterbury Schools Rebuild Programme, and we are preparing to undertake a major redevelopment project.

This multi-million dollar project will modernise our current school facilities and provide facilities that support our tamariki — with spaces that support their learning, as well as functional spaces for our wider school whānau and staff.

We completed the first Master Planning stage of the development in 2022.

This year, we move into the design stage and expect the construction contractor to be confirmed soon.

Construction is set to begin in 2024.

A redevelopment subcommittee will oversee the project as it moves forward, with members representing our Board, our staff and our wider community.

A school can’t run without established policies and procedures, and we follow the Ministry of Education’s Administration Guidelines in doing so.

Our policies and procedures are tailored to our school and are created, modified or updated in response to changes in legislation, significant events, Ministry guidelines, reviews/requests, etc. Each term, some policies come up for review.

Term 2 Review: Education Outside the Classroom

All reviews are open to the board, staff, students, and the school community (parents/caregivers/whānau). In order to streamline the review process, we work with SchoolDocs, a company which maintains, updates and reviews our policies.

Our school policies and procedures can be viewed at the SchoolDocs site. You will be asked to log in — the user name is ilam and the password is ilamschool (case sensitive).

It’s never an easy decision to close the school for a day, so the Board wants to thank YOU for making alternative arrangements last Thursday when NZEI members took industrial action.

Hopefully, the parties can negotiate a win/win resolution without further disruption to our tamariki’s learning.

The Ministry of Education is paying close attention to the levels of student attendance across all schools, with detailed reporting required. 

Though there is still room for improvement, we are pleased to say that Ilam School has markedly higher attendance than comparable schools. 

Maybe it’s because we have great teachers? Or simply because we have fabulous, keen students? 

Either way, thanks for supporting your child to get to class each day.

Liz Martyn was presiding member (chairperson) of the Board for most of last year. She made sure that there was governance continuity as the newly elected board members settled into their roles and our principal vacancy was advertised and filled. 

We very much appreciate your support and guidance, Liz.

Thanks for reading this far! 

Remember, school boards have a stewardship role that involves planning for, and acting in, the interests of the school and its community. Student learning, wellbeing, achievement and progress are our main concern.

And we actually have fun doing it.