Board Meeting Notes

AMESBURY SCHOOL BOARD OF TRUSTEES: Notes from the meeting held Wednesday 14 May 2014

1. Angela shared highlights and key learnings from the Asia Aware Conference she attended recently. Mandarin lessons will resume again in term 3 with a focus on building on previous knowledge. The next challenge will be to assist some integration of Mandarin into hubs outside of the weekly rotation lessons to build on and practise what has been learned. Further challenges for the future include finding ways to more effectively personalise learning in Mandarin and then to assess students' learning and report on progress to parents.

2. The Board congratulated Angela for being chosen to take part in a Principals' Delegation to China which is taking place in October later this year. This is an annual event put on by the Confucius Institute and is intended to give staff of schools who are becoming Asia Aware some authentic cultural experiences.

3. The Board congratulated Matt who has been chosen to return to the Google Certified Teacher Academy in Australia in 2015 as a Lead Learner (teacher). This is quite an honour and acknowedges that Matt, our e_Learning lead teacher, is being recognised in the international arena.

4. Matt and Urs shared with the Board about their experiences of the Eductech Conference in Brisbane and the take home learnings from it. They said the variety of presentations by world renowned speakers such as Prof Sugata Mitra and Sir Ken Robinson were very affirming of the direction and focus of learning at Amesbury School. The take home messages from the conference included:

• Increase the component of student-led learning - this is when students will be most engaged and, when facilitated well by teachers, this is when they will learn the most about how to be a learner - which is essential for their future
• focus on a broader range of learning skills
• assessment to reflect the broader range of skills needed for our students' future

5. A brief discussion took place about the transition for Amesbury students to environments with more traditional testing which is used for grouping students and the impact on students who don't respond well to this type of high stakes testing. Lesley and Urs said they intend initiating a conversation with the schools concerned.

6. Lesley presented an oral summary of Term 1 student achievement in Reading, Writing and Maths. This showed generally positive trends with some areas of concern in some learning areas. Of particular concern is the achievement of boys in writing and, in general, the achievement of boys at year 4/5. Lesley said that individual or group learning plans have been put in place for all students "at risk of not achieving" where they are capable of achieving. 

7. Five policies were reviewed. The communications policy was held over as it is part of a bigger piece of work being undertaken by the Board. The following policies were reviewed, revised and approved:

• BOT Meeting Protocols
• Complaints Policy
• Personnel Policy
• BOT Code of Ethics

A further five policies will be reviewed for approval at the next meeting

8. Part 2 of Governance for the 21st Century was deferred to next meeting due to lack of time.

9. The Board received the 2013 Attendance report and noted that there was a small drop in attendance from 2012 to 2013 even though a much smaller percentage of familes travelled overseas during school time. The principal pointed out that over two years of data there is a small number of students for whom attendance is an ongoing concern.

10. Recapitation - nothing has been heard from the Ministry about the school's application. Lesley and David to initiate a discussion with Raroa.

11. ALF - ALF is continuing to prove to be a valuable tool to assist learning. There are some fixes and improvements required to make it more useful. Staff will clarify exactly what these are and seek prices from Deviate for this work. At the next ICT sub-committee meeting a recommendation will be made about just what the ongoing programme of work will be. Lesley commented that there is a lot of interest in ALF from schools around the country. The goal going forward is to revise the Maths and Reading matrices and have them up on ALF before the end of term 3 so a trial can begin in term 4.

12. Hall Report for 2013 and Marketing: The report provided information about the usage of the hall. It commented that the hall was being used for a limited range of activities and a goal has been set to extend the variety of activites that will take place in the hall as well as to increase the number of hours it is used. To this end, a marketing and PR specialist has been employed for five hours per week to assist with this. Beckie Duffy of the Churton Park Community Centre has agreed to work with us. This will enable a nice link between the WCC facilities and our community hall.