Top marks to our region’s students
Wha¯ nau get in behind school pupils during eight weeks at home
Tauranga school pupils have done an “incredible” job making do at home, principals say. Schools welcomed back students last week after being closed for eight weeks during the Covid-19 lockdown.
By May 15, two days before schools reopened to students, the Ministry of Education had sent out 19,735 laptops or Chromebooks nationally, to school pupils in need of online learning devices.
It had also sent out 256,740 hardcopy learning packs.
Te Kura o Matapihi kaiako Sandy Bornholdt said the school saw “kids shine that may be quieter in the class”.
“It was quite incredible ... By the end of it, they were ready to come back - most of them. But our wha¯nau were just 100 per cent behind it - and our kaiako [teachers] as well. It was mindblowing.”
This was despite the fact the school had asked for online learning devices to be supplied “but there wasn’t enough in the country and we suspected we wouldn’t get them as NCEA students were the priority”.
“We tried to send home as many devices as we had but we couldn’t get to everybody ... The ministry insured the devices before we sent them out, which helped out.”
English learning packs arrived “pretty quickly” to students at home but “the te reo packs were very late in arriving”, Bornholdt said.
“It wasn’t ‘just in case’ learning it was ‘just in time’.
“It’s pretty successful - what we’ve been able to achieve - having online hui,” she said.
Pa¯pa¯moa College was “privileged” to be one of the first Bay of Plenty schools to receive ministry-delivered computers, principal Steve Lindsey said.
“We were aware that there were some delivery delays due to excessive demand on couriers,” Lindsey said.
Sixty-four computers were sent to the college’s students in need, on top of
227 school computers loaned to others.
“With regards to printed materials we did order some on behalf of students but relied on our own prepared resources,” he said.
“Teachers were good at finding out who needed what so that the school could find a solution.”
One of the Bay of Plenty schools left waiting for devices was O¯po¯tiki
College.
Staff requested 109 devices for students going without, but two weeks ago they had only received 21, deputy principal Robyn Abrahamharris said.
Staff made phone calls to collate students’ needs “at short notice”.
“Even then this is still not equitable because not all families have a cellphone, data or credit on phones.”
“Not all students have an ideal situation to work from at home either with many distractions or lack of a quiet space,” she said.
At alert level 3 staff delivered more than 150 hardcopy learning packs “from Hawai to the back of the Waiotahe Valley and everywhere in between”.
One of the school’s values is resilience and Abraham-harris said rangatahi and wha¯nau demonstrated this “in trying times”.
“There are still plenty of challenges ahead ... inequity for Ma¯ori and rural learners is always an uphill battle.”
The Ministry of Education’s chief digital officer Stuart Wakefield said there had been “global [computer] supply shortages due largely to the pandemic”.
“We acknowledge that the distribution of computers to students around New Zealand has not been as fast as everyone would like.”