Middle School

Years 7 to 10 (Middle School) have made a transition to using National Curriculum Levels and you will have seen these in the recent reports. Each level has three distinctions; Developing, Proficient and Advanced. The report document illustrates your child’s progress year to year. As you will be aware, the year 9 and 10 Integrated Curriculum programme introduced in semester one 2020 was formally reviewed at the end of the semester amid concerns that it was not meeting its intended outcomes. The review document can be viewed CLICK HERE. Semester two has made for a settled start with a more familiar teaching and learning programme for staff and students.

Curriculum leaders are now in the process of designing the 2021 year 9 and 10 curriculum programme and this will be complete by the end of term 3. At this stage it has been agreed that the timetable will follow a ten day cycle and that the timetable structure will be the same each day, with a shorter final block after lunch. It has also been agreed that all core subjects will be taught as standalone courses while the allocation of option choices and a small component of integrated topics is still being worked on by curriculum leaders . There will be regular updates in High Tide as we proceed, as well as the opportunity for community feedback later in the term.

The Asian language programme for Chinese and Japanese delivered across our Kahui Ako schools was delayed in some cases by Covid and is now underway in all schools

NCEA years 11-13

The NCEA courses are now all business as usual following Covid and your child should be firmly into the swing of completing work for internal assessments and in preparation for external assessments. The change to 6 option subjects this year appears to have been very successful, with the benefits of further teaching and learning time for each subject.

You may be aware that NCEA was under review with the intention to run trials on a new programme in 2021. This process has now been put on hold following Covid-19, with a view to possibly introducing trials for an updated NCEA system in 2022.

Year 9 and 10 reports and parent-student-teachers interviews

You will have received a link to your child's progress report on Friday. The report illustrates the current level of progress against the National Curriculum in specific subjects. These levels illustrate your child's level at the time of assessment for that aspect of the curriculum.

The parent-student-teacher interviews coming up in week 5 will be with your child's new subject teacher, following the changes to the learning programme in years 9 and 10. These teachers will be unlikely to be able to discuss your child's progress during last semester's integrated programme but they will be able to discuss your child's progress this term.