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SCHOOL DESCRIPTION ~ 2011
Avondale
Primary has experienced a gradual declining roll since the September
2010 earthquake. However, since the February 22nd quake of 2011, there
has been a significant roll reduction as families took flight and left
Christchurch and this pattern has been experienced in schools right
across the Eastern suburbs. Our past five year July roll average of 505
pupils cannot be replicated with likely projections for this year
suggesting it will be approximately 360. This will have a significant
impact on the school in terms of staffing and operational funding
through 2012 and beyond.
The school's natural catchment has a mix of residential properties with
a complete cross-section of families from those on benefits to those in
business or in a profession. The school is a Decile 2, reflecting the
diverse community make-up.
The school is fully staffed with professionally competent and
experienced teachers. The current teacher staffing rate (FTTE) is
25.25. Additional staffing is made available to support reading
recovery, ESOL and International students. A Resource Teacher of
Literacy (RTLit) is based on site who serves a number of schools in the
NE of Christchurch. Administrative and associate support staff,
caretaker and cleaners complete the staffing team.
The school has established a reputation for providing quality education
for all its pupils and attending to the needs of students with special
needs or abilities in the area. Significant achievement gains have been
made by our students given that many pupils
enrol with a narrow range of experiences and opportunities,
necessitating special programmes to provide the foundation skills for
learning. As a school we have a prime focus on literacy and numeracy.
Strong behavioural management systems are in place both
within the classrooms and in the playground. A strengthening community
partnership has seen groups of trained and supervised parent helpers,
assisting in a variety of learning programmes such as
“Prompt-Pause-Praise”, HPP and Perceptual Motor programmes.
Avondale is well resourced and has become an Information, communication
and technology (ICT) school with which teachers use to enhance aspects
of the curriculum. Teaching staff completed a 3 year ICT cluster
contract in 2004. The school library has been
upgraded into an Information Centre and is considered to be the “hub” of the school.
Since the beginning of 2001, the school has catered for International
students. This programme has proved to be enormously successful and is
now supported by an ESOL teacher. These children are integrated into
mainstream classes but are withdrawn to receive specialist language
support.
Education outside the classroom is encouraged through trips and visits
by all children. Older children experience a class camp on each of
their final two years at school.
Special Needs
Avondale school has been recognised as a “magnet” school for the
provision of special needs programmes by the wider community. The
school has a special needs subcommittee, chaired by the Assistant
Principal with a Special Needs Coordinator (SENCO) portfolio that
apportions resources (including Teacher Aides) to identified children
through out the school. The school administers a large number of
Individualised Education Programmes (IEPs) to approximately 10% of the
children on the roll. The school uses a number of mechanisms to
determine eligibility of children for extra support; from diagnostic
testing to off-site specialist referrals from outside agencies. The
subcommittee is made up of representatives from the teaching staff,
senior management, teacher aides and an RTLB rep. The committee
convenes formally once each term. It also administers a “Transitional”
fund budgeted from the BOT to minimise the disruption to existing
timetabled children working within the general teacher aide pool and to
maximise opportunities for newly presented children with special needs
both from within the school and new enrolments. There are many
programmes and plans in place to support children’s learning generally,
either individually or in groups, both within the classroom setting and
outside. There is an emphasis on inclusiveness. Programmes are run by
classroom teachers, teacher aides, trained parent helpers or other
specialists. Specialist programmes include, HPP, PMP, and oral language
programmes.
Restorative Practice
From the beginning of 2008, Avondale begun to introduce restorative
practices within the school. Each year we have always reflected on the
ways that we manage student behaviours. We have always considered that
we have done fairly well with behaviour management and this was
confirmed by past ERO reviewers. Having said that, we feel that we can
do more. Restorative practices moves towards changing habits that have
lead to inappropriate behaviours or actions. It gives perpetrators
opportunities to more fully understand the consequences of their
actions and to face up to what has been done and for victims to feel
that their voice has been heard. It involves taking responsibility for
one’s actions and encourages them to decide how they can make things
“right” and to repair the damage done. The fundamental concepts of
restorative practices are:
• Misconduct is a violation of people and relationships
• Violations create obligations and liabilities
• restorative practice seeks to heal and put things right.
We acknowledge that this is not a quick-fix solution. In fact it may
take 3 or more years to “imbed” as part of the school culture.
New NZ Curriculum
From the beginning of last year (2010), Avondale implemented its new
“Avondale” curriculum, based on the new curriculum framework. Extensive
work has been undertaken within the staff to best meet the needs of our
students and to further cement key competencies. It has strong links to
the new National Standards in literacy and numeracy and these are
emphasised in the school’s Annual plan in these areas.
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