Section
Practice
Practical guidance for the day-to-day work of leading a New Zealand school.
About this section
Articles in this section share how-to advice on the operational and relational aspects of principalship: navigating employment law, writing letters of expectation, talking to parents about ERO reports, enacting Te Tiriti o Waitangi in school life, mentoring future leaders, and supporting equity in the classroom. Contributors are working principals, sector specialists, employment lawyers, and education consultants drawing on lived experience in New Zealand schools. Use this section to find tested approaches to common challenges, build your professional toolkit, and learn from the practice of colleagues across the country — from country schools to large urban primaries.
Learning Remarkably
LEARNING REMARKABLY . . . Liz Hawes Editor The spectacular Central Otago landscape offers an The design includes clear sight lines from the mountains to the impossibly beautiful backdrop to the thriving tourism resort of lake and deliberate connections between the outside and inside Queenstown. Mountain ranges rear skywards in jagged profile through the strategic […]
NZCER – Explaining Star Assessment Changes
NZCER – EXPLAINING STAR ASSESSMENT CHANGES The New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) team discusses standardised test development and addresses concern about the revised STAR test. Anyone working in schools today will be aware of Many of you will be familiar with how scales work. Students how much assessment practice has changed in recent […]
Teaching Students Financial Skills for Life
Teaching students financial skills for life Robyn Scott Education Manager, Commission for Financial Literacy and Retirement Income Children growing up in the 21st century face financial and skills to take charge of their own lives. Giving them real issues that previous generations didn’t have to worry about. examples at school will help them make more […]
Five Keys to Building and Maintaining Sustainable School Momentum
Five Keys for Building and Maintaining Sustainable School Momentum David J.C. McKenzie Introduction Let’s face it. We all want our school’s to grow and be better places from when we first started to when we leave. When we leave we want people to celebrate the successes of our time there and not celebrate that we […]
The Rich Kids
Two years ago, Matt O’Dowda’s career took a radical lurch residents brimming with spare cash to titivate their gardens or in direction. From the comfort of his medium sized decile eight fill their homes with the latest electronic gadgetry. For many it’s a country school he packed up his not inconsiderable leadership struggle to buy […]
Children Massaging Children: Hauora
The best example of right brain learning process is HAUORA Eva Scherer eva.scherer@xtra.co.nz www.childconnection.org.nz “We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has of course powerful muscles, but no personality. It cannot lead; it can only serve.” — Albert Einstein What did the genius Einstein have in mind when writing this? […]
Highlights at Hillsborough
To say a person is ‘passionate’ is a cliché these days. Overuse of the word has stripped it of its punch and status. A pity, because when you describe Nicola Girling, principal of Hillsborough School in Auckland, it’s the word that leaps to the top of the list. It springs out in neon lights blinding […]
The National Aspiring Principals’ Programme
Coaching through partnership Dr. Jan Robertson Academic Director How do you design professional learning that will develop future generations of leaders who are even more than we ourselves have been able to be? This was our challenge in the National Aspiring Principals’ Programme (NAPP), a professional learning and development contract funded by the Ministry of […]
Moving on up in Manurewa – The story of Manurewa Intermediate School
Editor Music blasts from the expansive Manurewa Intermediate School (MIS) auditorium as several hundred gyrating students and staff boogie exuberantly on the stage, on the floor, and in the aisles. Outside a few more make their chalk mark on one of several designated tagging boards erected about the school grounds. Tucked in the confines of […]
Principals’ Advise – Helping Principals achieve a successful outcome
Helping Principals achieve a successful outcome Fiona McMillan LLB, BA, B Ed, PG Dip Ch Ad 1. The Legal Support scheme (the Scheme) operated by Principals’ Advice and Support Ltd (PASL) is designed to give employment related legal advice to principals. As the Scheme’s primary legal advisers we avoid advising Boards of Trustees, teachers, or […]
‘Willowbank School’ In thirty languages
According to a paper on languages in Aotearoa New Zealand, published by the Royal Society of New Zealand, ‘New Zealand is now home to some of the greatest cultural diversity in the world’. The paper goes on to say that over the past few decades we have witnessed unprecedented increases in ethnic, cultural, social and […]