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Schools. It's organised by the Ministry of Education Community Partnerships team

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and we have five of our presenters here today and we are very privileged and lucky to have them today.

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Um,

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a warm welcome to everyone and thank you for joining us today on a Monday, especially if you've been busy throughout the day.

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Um, we're going to kick start with the correct here.

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Kahikatea kahikatea pikia vakarewa Karungaa Hiria Kakori Yuki faka Murimi.

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Poor attitude to Pullman amari Humana tikanga mathuri umaya purpurina mokopuna naranga Tyra Moore pupu kati hai teehee Mariota.

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My name is Nasreen and I'm the Senior Advisor for Community Partnerships based in Auckland and I'm joined today by my colleague Award Award Hackers. He's also in Auckland and he looks after Hamilton and I have my team member from Wellington, Cynthia Soto

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in another team member from Christchurch, Zara Imam Zade

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in. All of my team members are going to support throughout the webinar.

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Um, just a few housekeeping before we start. Um, there's going to be recording of this webinar.

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Please keep note that your mic and your cameras are turned off as we don't want the Wi-Fi to be affected because of the large number of participants.

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Question and answers is going to be through the Q&A on top. If you can see beside chat, Q&A is there on top.

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Chet is disabled because Q&A is going to be managed

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in the segment for question and answer is going to be after all the presenters have presented.

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Please stay present, remain for full session so that you can get all the information that's going to be shared today.

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And for your questions and your comments, please make it short, make it concise so that we are able to answer them.

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And now we're going to start with one of our first presenters, which is Huda Purvis. She's the Deputy Principal in Asanko.

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Huda is a passionate educator with over a decade of experience in schools across New Zealand and overseas. She's currently the DP in Sango at Tema Tauranga,

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with previous leadership experience in learning support, digital learning and team leadership roles. Holding a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Biology,

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a postgraduate Diploma in Teaching and a Masters of Education, Buddha is committed to culturally responsive and inclusive education.

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She's especially passionate about growing teacher practise, student wellbeing and driving innovative learning through a holistic Houda based approach.

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Over to you, Hoda.

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Thank you

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kid Akoto. Thank you Nesrine for the warm welcome kiddo. Coach everyone, everyone go with the proviso Co Ingua. My name is Heather Pervez. As Nasrin mentioned, I am a Senco and Deputy Principal at Timatanga School, which is a little primary school in the South of Auckland.

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Today my aim is to give you an insight into the role of a SENCO and how they can support children and find out schools. I've tried to answer some of your questions that you've already shared with us around how you can support your summary care at home.

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Please bear in mind that this is just a sort of general overview of what is Sankyo does. Every school, the role looks a bit different. Some schools don't have the same car so it can it can vary quite a bit. But this is just from my experience and just a general insight of what it might look like. So a Cinco is a special education needs coordinator and this is a school based role focused on managing and coordinating programmes and support for learners with additional needs. Again, not every school will have had some schools

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might have another member who does this sort of part of the job, but there might be a classroom teacher, they might be in senior leadership or sometimes they do have learning support coordinators at some schools as well. So

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all right, there we go. So what is a Sinco? As mentioned, it could be a teacher or a school leader. They are qualified teachers. They coordinate with teachers, teacher aides, parents. It could be social worker and schools as well, as well as other agencies like the ones you'll hear from today like RT, LB&MOE and their job the same who's job is to ensure that students receive the appropriate support and resources to achieve their full potential and thrive in an inclusive learning environment.

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What that might look like. So part of a Cinco's job is identifying needs. So they would be working with staff to identify and assist students who may have special educational needs.

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They might also support by developing plans which is creating and reviewing Ip's or also called individual education plans for students who have additional learning support.

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They might also coordinate provision. What that means is they might oversee the implementation, implementation sorry of special education policies and programmes within the school. They might start an initiative to support those learners that need additional support.

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A big job of Asenka as well is to support staff in school and that's as we mentioned, my passion as well is to make sure that teachers are well supported, to be able to support the tamariki in the classroom. So Sencos might provide guidance and support to teachers and teacher aides to ensure that they can effectively support students that have additional needs.

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They might also, well, they actually need to monitor the progress of students. So they're track tracking and monitoring the progress of all the students that are on their register that they support and make sure that they're receiving appropriate interventions. And there would also be working with lots of stakeholders. So that would be Perrance and other agencies as mentioned before, Moe, they might also be speech language therapists or occupational therapists and other professionals and agencies to coordinate support.

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Another part that's not mentioned on the slide is sort of applying for support as well. So Cinco would be your go to person if you're looking for support from Moe or RTLB or any other agency. They can help guide you. They can also, you know, part of their job is also managing budget and prioritising with the funding goes.

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They also, if you are your child is at high school, they might also look at the coordination of a special assessment conditions for students that needed. But overall they just wear a lot of hats. So there's quite a bit that they have to do. Every school again is different. So what each Cinco does could look quite different.

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So the students that thinkers would support also

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can very generally there are neurodiverse learners and a learners that might have some disabilities or learning needs. This would include students that are hard of hearing, blind students as well any, any additional students that need that additional support.

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They might also support students who have communication or behavioural needs, including any sensory sort of needs that students might have. So some ASD students there might be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder or a DHD students as well might have some sensory needs. So you know, they might need sensory toys etcetera. So they can support, they support those students as well,

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gifted learners. We've got our English language learners as well, which are Esso learners, refugee students or any other students that would be at risk of not achieving

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or risk of disengaging from learning overall.

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Other learning needs that are not mentioned and could include specific learning difficulties like dyslexia, dyscalculia as well. But a big part of my role at my school because I am, I've got a hoarder focused approach, which is wellbeing. It's around that emotional and social difficulties that students might have. So Sinkhole can also support student with emotional programmes or social stories etcetera that can support students

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who are facing those challenges.

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So this is more centred around questions

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that were asked when you registered. So from here on, I've sort of tried to cater on to those, cater to those questions.

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So how might these students be supported at school, At each school and for each student, support might look very different. Support can also be based on the size of the school, the budget, the needs of the school as well. But this is these are some ways that schools do support those students. So the biggest form of support is differentiated classroom teaching. Especially in primary schools, it's expected that teachers cater to the needs of all the tamariki in their classroom.

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We also have learning support assistants or teacher aides. This comes from funding and I'll talk a little bit about where this funding might come from in a minute. But they can also support students one to one or in small groups as well, which goes to the next point, which is individual or group interventions. So again, that could be supported by teacher aides, but that could also be supported by senior leadership team at the school. Sometimes they run intervention programmes, etcetera,

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a collaboration with external professionals as I mentioned earlier with RTLB, Moe, et cetera, and monitoring that progress. So it's important that we monitor each student progress and also creating an inclusive school culture.

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I'll be with strengths are celebrated. So it's not just focused on challenges and there are appropriate interventions put into place as students. All students feel included.

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I was talking earlier about the funding. I'll talk about on the next slide about the funding streams where we can get support. But part of school funding comes from what's called support for inclusion funding used to be called the SEG grant and that's up to schools how they use it. So again, they might use them for interventions, they might use them just for teacher right time for some students that needed or they might have some other resources that they might buy with it. That's up to the schools how they use that.

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Here are some supports that are available. Some of these people will talk after my presentation so you'll get to hear from them.

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These are again, supports can vary

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in what they look like at each school and for each student. This is sort of the mainstreams of funding or the main ways that schools generally apply for support.

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So I'll talk about ORS, which is ongoing resource scheme. So this is probably the hardest funding to get because with this one, you have to show that the student is actually very high needs. A high needs are very high needs, but this formal funding does support students until they're 21 years of age.

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Other support that we can get eyes from the ministry so we have to apply again. So if you're looking at absolute behaviour support, speech, language therapy, occupational therapy or even physiotherapy support for students generally the same code would apply to the Moe and we'd have someone come in and assess and talk to the parents. It's all done through with parents consent.

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It's RTLB. I will have an RTB speak after me. So you'll hear more about that. But at schools we, we have a lot of Rtls at the school that I'm working at because they've and have a range of knowledge. They've got very specific knowledge around certain learning needs, etcetera. They can support with resources, they can support with screeners. So we can't diagnose students with learning needs or, you know, even autism or ADHD or dyslexia. But sometimes

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you can help with screeners to see, yes, they might be at risk and they might guide the parents to what the next step would look like for that.

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But I think a big work of RTLB is empowering teachers again. So they do work a lot alongside teachers to support the students.

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We've also got in class support, which is some students, different schools depending on the size and the needs get allocated number of in class support, which is five hours a week, so one hour a day. So some students might be supported this way.

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These forms of support can mean teacher rate, time or support in the small groups that we talked about

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if parents are looking for diagnosis. So if you're looking for diagnosis for ASD, autism, ADHD, dyslexia, that's done through a paediatrician or specialist places like spelled which does the dyslexia assessment. Generally, people who are working within the school are not experts in those areas that they can diagnose.

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I just quickly want to touch on the other support. So the I talked about English language learners, which is our ESOL learners. So a lot of schools have programmes running for that. They might again be 1 to one or whole group setting, small groups. They also provide refugee support. So refugee support can come from Moe in terms of funding the Ministry of Education, which is a bit more than the ESOL learners

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sometimes, as we know for refugee students, it's also language can be a big barrier.

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So that funding can be used for translators and teacher aides that could support that student in that same language or again, based on these in a different way.

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Add the two forms of fundings I haven't mentioned. They are I RF, which is interim response funding. If something's needed urgently, sometimes schools can apply for that one and also transition support. So there is transition support available for students coming into primary school from early childhood and also going out of primary school into high school. Sometimes that's done through RTLB, sometimes that's done through OE, and sometimes it might just be the school supporting that transition.

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Now this was a a question that was asked a lot about how you can support your child.

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The most important thing is that you are your child's advocate. We've got teachers and people working at school who also are But you know your child best. You spend the most amount of time with them.

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So

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advocate for your child.

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It's also important to attend the parent workshops, any parent meetings that they have at school, any events. Sometimes schools have, they might have some evenings where they talk about how you can support your child with reading, writing, or sometimes they might have support around anxiety or online use, etcetera. So if you can, where possible, attend those

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also discuss your concerns with the teacher and I've said and or team leaders. Sometimes you know

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you might need to take it to the team leader because it's a issue that's out of the teacher's hand

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or teacher can't support you. But sometimes if you feel like you haven't been heard as well, which can happen, I do encourage that you talk to the team leader. You can also request to meet the same call and the other leadership if you know there isn't a person that's

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the single at that school. But there would be someone who supports students with learning needs and can support parents as well. And I've also put down their reach out to supports. There's a lot of community based programmes around and there's also social worker in schools

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do reach out and they can also then help guide to the next place. So a social worker in school might not be able to support you, for example, but they would know other agencies there might support you with specific issues.

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The process of support is around identification that I mentioned the saying those are responsible for, and then we have the planning, the IP

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after that, its implementation in reviews. So parents are involved in that process and should be involved in all of that process. So if your child is getting any support at school, you're within your right to ask for what this is looking like. What's the progress that the students making? How can you know if you want to support them at home as well, you can ask for that as well. It is really important that schools and parents work in partnership.

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So we have to make sure that that's happening. And so please reach out.

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There is support out there,

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it's just sometimes a matter of asking.

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So this is the last slide around how you can support those neurodiverse learners at home as well.

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I've got some examples here, sort of not very general, ohh, sorry, not very specific. They're quite general, but you can also find a lot of things online. If you are looking to support students with a specific neurodiversity, for example, there are resources on the ministry website as well and they're quite good. If you want, you know, looking to support a DHD and learners or learners who have autism or any other neurodiversity,

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we can look for specific ways of supporting them online. We'll go through some of these.

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So

18:44
one way that learners can be supported at home and in the classroom as well. So all of these also apply to classrooms is creating a supportive environment where you know their sensory needs are considered. So having a calm space, especially when they're emotionally dysregulated, it's a good idea to have a little space where they can go and calm down that's distraction free with minimal platter. And some some students, some neurodiverse students may benefit from fidget toys

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to channel excess energy with this as well. For a lot of our students that have additional needs, structure and predictability is very important. So establishing routines in predictable environments to help children can help them feel secure and understand what to expect.

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Got movement breaks? So, you know, most students, actually all students have a short attention span, but some students, for them it can be even shorter. So it's a good idea to have movement breaks to break up the longer activities, especially if you're doing things like homework at home with them. Don't expect them to work with you for 30-40 minutes or an hour. Maybe do 15 minutes, take a break, and then come back to the activity.

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If you are struggling with them not being able to follow tasks or your instructions, it might be a good idea to break down those instructions as well, just into smaller chunks. Instead of giving them 10 instructions, you just go one or two, three sometimes if they're older and and just

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you break those tasks down

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and play to their strengths. All our learners have strengths. So it's about tapping into those trends and using that to your advantage. So you identify that strain and build on it. So even if they're not interested in reading, they're interested in dinosaurs. Make your reading about dinosaurs or you know, your maths about dinosaurs, just as an example.

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I've got another thing here about encouraging open communication with the children and the teacher as well, because I do think that that's really important. That's why it's on 2 slides. Please do communicate with the with the teachers, but also talk to the child as well. You know, the children do know what's hard. The children do know a lot of the times what's going on. And sometimes even if they're not sharing it with you verbally, you might be able to see some triggers. You might be able to see, you know,

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they're getting really agitated and stuff, and that's still a form of communication. So do listen to that

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and umm,

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you know, preempted

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give them the space that they need or talk to them about it as well. So they're feeling a bit

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dysregulated. You can talk to them and say, hey, looks like you're a little bit upset. How about we calm down South? That's still that communication that you've got with them,

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I think. I'm sorry, going back to

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the thing that I had at the top. So I've got this note on my device that reads Taki Watanga, which is a trial word for autism, but it means in their own space and time. So it's used

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for students who have autism, but it translates to in their own time and space

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because all children work in their own time and space, as do all adults. We all have different strengths, we all work at a different pace, we all learn in different ways. So it's really important to keep that in mind as well. So if your child is learning differently, if your youngest child is learning differently to the oldest one,

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every child is different. It doesn't mean that there's something wrong or something's not quite right. But if you are concerned, please do talk to yeah, yeah, the teachers, the same Co etcetera. And also just be kind to yourself as well. Job of appearance quite hard as well. And in if you do have learners that have additional needs, it can be even harder. So be kind to yourself as well and ask for support. There is usually a lot of support available and there are people who who would love to support you

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as well at schools as well. So please do ask. That's it from me. And if you've got any questions, please do feel free to put them in the Q&A and we'll try to answer them later on. Thank you.

23:09
Thank you, Huda, for that very informative and clarifying presentation. It's good to hear from you in the processes that you explained as well. I will now move on to our second speaker who is Olivia, Olivia Tinkler.

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Olivia has taught for more than 15 years both in New Zealand and overseas in both state and private education systems. She has two pre school age children and is currently working as an RTLB.

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Excuse me where she will explain in central Auckland supporting schools to lift achievement and improve wellbeing for the students in Fano. Over to you, Olivia.

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Thank you. Thank you, Nazarene. I'll attempt to explain what I do. I had to try and do this with my family, a couple of family members in the weekend. And yeah, it's always quite difficult to try and explain what you do to people that you know, let alone people who are on a webinar. So I'll do my best.

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So I am here as representative of the RLB service,

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which is something that is available to students in all schools, all state schools across New Zealand.

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Firstly, Coto called Olivia Tukwila called Waka Totowa called topiary team owner call Kitty Kitty Dora ho Cortana Kimiko a Ho Anohana Coto Tina Coto, Tina Coto, Katya I. My name is Olivia, I grew up in Hamilton and I now work in central Auckland covering the western half of the central SMS and Waiheke and Great Barrier islands. We have quite a diverse coverage area. We have students from

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many, many different ethnic and cultural and linguistic backgrounds

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and it's a very, you know, it's an incredibly diverse area with a lot of strengths within our communities and I really appreciate that. I've been in RTLB since the beginning of 2020 and in that time I've seen a lot of changes post pandemic for teachers

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in the classrooms and in schools

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as well as in the community. I've also become a parent in that time, which also brings a new lens to my practise.

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And before becoming an MTLB, I was a teacher for over 10 years, both here in New Zealand and overseas.

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Um, so

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yeah, to my next slide, who or what our RTLB,

25:50
Firstly, RTLB stands for resource teacher of learning and behaviour. So we are registered teachers, We still have our practising certificates, we get into classrooms as much as possible. And when we were allowed to, we take over classrooms and you know, teach alongside teachers if they'll let us often, you know, as much as we love our jobs, we do miss the classroom. So it's really nice to be able to get back into our, our original profession.

26:16
Um, we do have specialist training in student learning and behaviour. So there is a post grad diploma which alter all RLB S are right to

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and and I finished mine last year

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and that specialist teaching post grad just sort of expands our knowledge and our

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awareness of, you know, different ways of working with students and in schools.

26:48
What we do is we work alongside schools and teachers

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to understand what's happening with a particular student and what might be making learning harder.

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We focus on supporting the adults in

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your child's life, like teachers and school staff, to make changes that will better meet your child's needs in the classroom. The goal is to make sure the environment, teaching opportunities and support are right for them so that they can thrive.

27:17
We follow a strengths based perspective and we use an evidence lead practise. So as Huda mentioned before, all children have strengths. We like to focus on what is going right in a student's world, what are they good at, what are the interests and we like to use that to build on where they may need extra support.

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Um, and we combined that with our knowledge of, you know, the best evidence practise that we have to make suggestions and support teachers to make changes in their classroom practise and support schools to also support the students.

28:00
OK, so we work together with others to provide practical advice, advice and support and we'll use a strength based approach. As I just said. We also respect the cultural beliefs of those who interact with and we follow a practise sequence known as HIPAA. So HIPAA, which I'll talk about in a moment, just kind of as a sort of a circular sequence that guides our practise and supports what we do in schools.

28:28
The process works with the first step being the school

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and the RLB liaison. So there's a liaison RTLB, who works in every school

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to her discusses the learning needs of particular students that may have been sort of identified by the Sinco or by other teachers. And we discuss what kind of options there would be in terms of what we offer as a service.

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The school then contacts the appearance and they discuss what options there are if ATL be involvement is the right step.

29:08
If it is felt that this is the right course of action, the school will contact the RLB service and make her formal request for support.

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Parents need to give their consent in order for any RTLB referral to take place and it is an informed consent. So parents have the right to see the information that is written or recorded about their child and see the reason why the support was the request for support was made.

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So all information is as as the F for you to see. It's really important that it's transparent. And as a parent, you have the right to decline a service or withdraw consent at anytime if you felt that that was the right option.

29:54
There are three meetings. So in our sort of practise sequence we have the first meeting, which is with the RLB, the FANO there

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teachers and representatives from the school, usually the SINCO, to better get to know the student. This is where we get together and we discuss

30:11
what's going right for the student, first of all, because it's really important that we maintain that strength based perspective.

30:17
Umm,

30:19
within look at, you know, what

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potential

30:24
needs the student may have and any concerns that anyone has, whether that's the school, the teacher, or the parent are raised.

30:34
We then make a plan to collect information, so that's usually through classroom observations,

30:42
some assessments, conversations with teachers, with the student as well collecting student voice

30:52
and our communication with the Fano as well. We always say that yes, we are this known as a specialist teacher, but really the specialists are the students, family and teachers because they are the experts on that student.

31:08
After we go into classrooms and spend some time collecting the information, we will have a second meeting, which is the action plan or Tar Tai meeting, where we come together as a team

31:21
and we

31:23
look through the data. We sort of identify if there's any obvious triggers or you know, for certain behaviours or any obvious trends in terms of when support might be needed, whether that's in a particular subject area or whether that's at a particular time of day.

31:42
And we then discuss a way forward. So we think how can we best address these particular challenges within a certain time frame? So we work within a 20 week roughly time frame. 20 weeks is equivalent to two school terms that can be extended under certain significance

32:07
that says like flexible. But generally around that sort of 20 weeks or half a school year as kind of that's what's sort of been recognised as the best time frame to ascertain whether or not this particular kind of support is working. And if it isn't, then how to change tack and what to do instead. So within those 20 weeks, so sort of from sort of like,

32:36
you know, just a rough kind of estimate. So from like sort of five weeks into the project, we start working with teachers, you know, coming in, putting the plans in action, whether that is,

32:50
you know, creating a behaviour plan with the school or modelling lessons, Co teaching lessons with teachers, providing resources, social stories, you know, first thing charts,

33:03
those kinds of things that are useful to sort of have in the classroom. We also can provide things for home as well. So we often make resources or, you know, give support to Fiano for them to carry on the same things at home. It's really that's been shown to be really useful that the language is consistent across the different settings.

33:33
Maybe if everybody is working from the same page.

33:37
And then after we've had those weeks of support and we do, you know, there's a lot of discussion and that time when we back and forth, you know, between the teacher and the same Co and the parents and the RTLB and the student, we come together again and we have a third meeting, which is our review meeting.

33:55
And this is where we review how the support has gone and make a plan for the support to continue with our RTLB involvement. So this is where if it is a successful plan,

34:06
then it will be able to be carried on without the constant need for an RTLB to be present and, you know, checking in on everybody. The best plans are sustainable and that's what we aim for.

34:21
You are welcome to bring any support people you would like to bring with you to meetings. So you know, the three meetings, feel free if you have someone else you'd like to bring, whether that's, you know, someone else from your family, an extended family member who spends a lot of time with your your child or a translator or somebody from the community that you feel would be really helpful to have the you're absolutely welcome to bring that with you.

34:48
Okay, this is a slide that just sort of

34:52
shows our practise sequence. So this is hypocrite or so if you are, if you are involved in an RTLB referral, you'll see this this graphic which just talks about how we work and it's sort of like it's sort of a circular shape because we'd like, you know, it's not a linear thing. We do sort of come back to certain things at certain points and just review that it is working the way we want it to work. And if something isn't working, then we go back and we try something else.

35:22
We don't just continue on with the same thing hoping that it will work eventually. We're pretty flexible and yeah, we try. And to make it so that it is like a like a sustainable model. Our seven guiding principles are that we are mokopuna and farno centre. So that means that we hold the child at the centre of our work

35:44
and the piano is an extension of the child,

35:48
which is. Yeah, as a parent myself, I understand this, um, really deeply that your child is, you know, your precious gift that you are putting out there into the world. And so anything that happens to your child happens to you as well. So that's why we really value the FUNO input. And you know, they are the best experts on their child. So it's really important that they are informed and involved

36:15
at every step

36:17
and and we encourage as much input from from families as possible.

36:22
Shouldn't just be something that you are just sitting back and observing. We encourage and invite parents to be active participants in the process.

36:33
We're strengths based. As I said before, every child has strengths. Every child is not just one thing. So it's really important to recognise that at every stage and and keep that in the forefront of everyone's mind.

36:50
We're collaborative. So like I said, we invite a range of opinions. It's not something that is

36:57
that an RLB will go away and write up a plan and then everyone has to do this because it's the best practise model. It is a collaborative effort.

37:07
Everyone has to sort of have a say. Is this going to work in your classroom, for instance, teachers, or is there something that you feel you can

37:16
parents like? Is it something that's going to work? If it's not OK, let's try something else. It's, you know, it's about everyone having a say in this process.

37:24
We are culturally affirming and responsive.

37:28
You know, we, we really value other insights and diversity and perspectives on issues.

37:35
Yeah, especially because, you know,

37:38
sitting students may have a certain belief about something and we need to know that so that we can work alongside them and the Alfano,

37:47
um, we're inclusive and we try as much as possible to avoid situations where we have like withdrawal groups or things like that. I mean, sometimes those things are necessary, but on the whole, it's we kind of embrace the idea of inclusive classroom where, you know, every student is involved as much as possible in the classroom routine.

38:15
You know, that that that is what the data says as the best for their academic and social and emotional development. And also this has, you know, the benefit of supporting other students in those classrooms who may also have similar needs. I don't think I've been into a classroom in the last five years as an RLP where there has been only one child with like an entirely

38:46
dependency of needs that there is so much crossover with with so many children. So it's important that, you know, everyone gets the opportunity to benefit and it also just kind of helps to

38:58
to make the teachers life hopefully a little bit easier too.

39:02
We're logical. That means we look at how classrooms operate, how schools operate and what the wider environment looks like. So it's not just

39:13
about, you know, we, we saw this in this this classroom observation at 10:20. We sort of think, OK, well, you know, this was after a fire drill or, you know, this was a moment where, you know, there's been something else happening previously or there was something else coming up that could have been causing anxiety. So we do look at a wider picture

39:35
and we're evidence informed as I said earlier. So we we try to bring together all the relevant information to make the best possible plan for what we do.

39:47

 

39:52
OK, so how can finally help? As I said earlier, Fanno are an essential part of the team, your participation and meetings and knowledge and your experiences of your child.

40:01
As respected and valued in the TLB service, you can work at home with your child to support the goals in the collaborative action plan. And often in our meetings we will have discussions around a home goal or you know, what can be done to support what the school is doing in the classroom. So that could be a having like a another copy of visuals that goes home that are, or a social story that parents can read. If there's going to be an event at school, you know, he's a social story about that. We're going to go through this at home. We're going to read it

40:34
tonight before bed and we're gonna, you know, prepare ourselves for that so that, you know, that also supports what the teachers are doing in the school.

40:44
Yeah. You can work at home with your child. Just what the goals. And please don't hesitate to ask questions. You know, that we we try and to be as open and approachable as possible. We do invite parents to contribute

41:02
and obviously, you know, there and especially in the areas that I work in,

41:10
their range of duty means that sometimes, you know, appearance may not have English as their first language. And that can sometimes be a little bit of a barrier in terms of, of asking questions or, or feeling that they are able to, you know, find something out or pushed into something. And again, you know, please make sure you have, you know, if, if you need any support with anything like that, you know, the schools, you know, obviously very happy to help and we can also support with that as well.

41:40
Yeah, because the the more questions that you have answered, the better the outcome is going to be for your student, your child.

41:50
So this is just a little bit of an overview around what we do.

41:54
So we have the three tiers of support.

42:01
So tier one, which is universal learning support non is Tim Martha

42:07
student needs can be met through inclusive and effective classroom practise. So this is where we work alongside teachers to think, OK, you know, we've noticed that the student

42:19
has issues in their transitioning time, you know, they may be dysregulated during transitions. So how can we support them to, to make those transitions a little bit easier between, you know, you know, reading and maths, for instance. And just, you know, maybe there's things in the classroom that we can tweak. Maybe we can put a system in place for everyone so that everyone can be, you know, just having a little bit more notice, for instance, that it, it's going to, you know, change to,

42:47
to reading in 5 minutes time or little, little things like that that we can do in the classroom. Tier 2 targeted learning support. So student needs can be met through targeted small group supplementary support. So that might mean like a

43:02
a particular focus on a reading group or a particular focus on a group of students who may need some support with

43:10
emotional regulation and finding ways that we can do that through a group situation. And then finally on the Tier 3, which is tailored learning support, students needs can be met through intensive individualised learning support or specialist intervention. So this may be more of

43:30
more about a particular individual student referral where you know the support may be

43:40
slightly more targeted to one student and their needs. And again, that is something that can be discussed with the whole team and we figure out what that will look like.

43:57
Again, a little bit more information on that. Tailored support is not necessarily 1 to 1 support. And I should probably mention that as a RTLB, we don't normally work 1:00 to 1:00 with students. The reason being for that

44:13
we have 20 weeks to try and affect our affect and change and then you know, we step back. So if a student has been given 11 to 1 support for 20 weeks and then that is suddenly cut, it is not going to be sustainable.

44:33
Um, so we try to think of sustainable solutions as much as possible. So normally that isn't 1 to 1 support, although it may include some instances of 1 to 1 interactions with RTLB and students

44:51
you know. Tailored support may include seating arrangements, specific strategy, tool or piece of equipment such as a wind then chart, a social story, a pencil grip, or assistive technology.

45:02
It may also include increased teacher scaffolding or different ways of presenting information for a particular student. Again, we try to make it so that it is sustainable for the teacher as well, because teachers are incredibly busy, as we all know,

45:19
and they're also trying to make all of the kids of their own students. So the more we can make it easy for them, the better.

45:27
That's our

45:28
very briefly, assistive technology is a T assistive technology. It's specialised equipment and remote sorry and technology that assists students to access and participate in learning. For example, the

45:41
remote microphone hearing aid, which is known as an RHA, which is a system where you have a student within a a headpiece. Ohh, sorry, an ear earpiece and the teacher wearing like a microphone attached around the neck, which transmits the audio into the ear so that it's a little bit less of a barrier between what the teacher says and hearing that across the classroom.

46:12
Text magnifier, Braille resources, software like speech to text or word prediction. I just want to mention for the Rematch A, some pieces of

46:21
assistive technology like the RMH A system do require a specific diagnosis. So the MH A requires a diagnosis of audio processing disorder or a PhD in order for that to be accessed.

46:36
Funding for assistive technology could be considered if the equipment the student requires is specialised and different from the equipment available in the class or the school. For instance if they have iPads in the classroom. But it would, it's felt that actually the student would probably benefit from a Chromebook instead of an iPad.

46:54
Sometimes in the course of an TLB referral, it may be decided by the team that assistive technology might be needed. So this would be editors one of the goals and the plan and then we would support the school to work towards a referral for that.

47:08
The application will be submitted to the

47:12
no way a moderation team which decision but the GP service. We don't have the jurisdiction to decide whether or not the applicant

47:20
and and successful.

47:23
So just quickly go through these. I know I'm conscious of time. How long does the TLB service last? So as I said, normally about two terms with an average of 15 weeks of implementation. So like that first five weeks meeting, data gathering and then 15 weeks of implementation before review review.

47:44
Can we expect the child to make curriculum expectations after 2 terms of RRBS sport support?

47:50
So 2 terms of RTLB support is usually not sufficient to meet curriculum expectations if your child is working, say, 3 curriculum levels below where the cohort would be.

48:03
Therefore, we measure the child's progress against this specific goal noted at the beginning of the process

48:09
and then at the end. If there's little to no progress if what if there is little to no progress at the end of the RTB support,

48:17
we support teachers to set specific goals that are achievable for the student. They implement evidence based strategies and monitor that these are being frequently used in the classroom and by school staff. With consistent use of tiered interventions. It's expected that there will be some progress. And yeah, and sort of like 95% of the their cases that I've worked on, we've seen progress and in the other 5% we've ended up, you know, re referring with a different plan in order to, you know,

48:46
that student and support the teachers and the fun are to, to get closer to our original goal.

48:54
And an unusual situations where there may be little to no progress after 2 terms. Then the team will discuss other factors that may be implementing, ohh, sorry, impacting progress. We may identify other avenues of support such as the GPMOA or the Curry Centre in Auckland. There may be other local depending on the part of the country that you're in, local support agencies for you as well.

49:20
Do we need any psych report to be able to refer a child for RTLB support? No, you can. You can refer anyone who needs learning or behaviour support,

49:30
um and if they have any psych report they don't need to be referred to an RTLB but sometimes it can be a recommendation.

49:42
Can the school request for support and multiple curriculum areas?

49:45
We try to focus on just one curriculum area for each request for support

49:51
and how often can we send referrals for the same child. So it's recommended that time is spent in beating the strategies from the previous referral before making further requests for support. However, as heard mentioned before, request for support can also include transitions to new schools or new year levels. RTLB support students all the way up until the end of year 10. So if they're at, if it's felt that it would be beneficial for a student to have support with transitioning between schools, even though they've just finished

50:22
a referral, that can be something that can be negotiated as well. My last slide, I'll raise some taking up so much time.

50:30
Our website is this is my own cluster website. So this is cluster seven in Auckland's website. However, if you Google ATLB,

50:41
there will be there's 40 RB clusters across the country, each working in different geographical areas. So there will be a local one for you.

50:51
Yeah, thank you.

50:54
Stop talking now. Thank you, Olivia. I'm mindful of the time and I'm also aware that

51:01
the Wi-Fi may be having issues for some of us. And if we are dropping off, it's because of the weather wars.

51:09
Um, we're gonna move on to the next presenter, which is Tanya Engineer. She's the education sector Educational Psychologist

51:18
with Ministry of Education and she's based in SW. She was born in India and attended intermediate college and university in Auckland. She completed her graduate diploma in Educational Psychology practise at Victoria University. Her work has only has always been with young people as a nanny, teacher aide, day care staff, AP mentor, a programme leader for university entrance in a safety programme, facilitator for children recovering from family violence. Passion lies in building

51:49
relationships with the father she supports, drawing on these trends skills to support their young ones growth change for themselves.

51:57
Over to you Tanya.

52:01
Kira Carter Namaste Cortana engineer Tokyo ingawa called Kaimata hernado aho. So Kira namaste. I'm Tanya. I am one of the educational psychologists that works with the Ministry of Education. I'm based in Auckland at the moment, but my ****** Papa and heritage is stood India. But I have called New Zealand home for about 22 years. This year, so very briefly, I'll be talking about how I support children and families across school

52:31
and explain what fires and educational psychologists look at when talking about a child's needs and what we all can do to support the wellbeing of our children as well. I do want to preface this by saying neurodiverse is a very hot term at the moment, but I'd like to unpack that a little bit by saying, you know, neuro talks about your mind, your brain, your body, your person. How does that function? And diverse is obviously

53:02
speaking to the diversity of how our brain can work as well. So looking at how any brain, any kind of person can function in their in their way, that's what we'll be focusing on as well. And I invite to think, invite you to think about your own diverse ways of learning and being in the world as well. So to give you an example of that quickly, when somebody is reading something to me, I often zone out

53:32
because I don't I don't really attend to the things if I'm hearing it, but if I need, I need to look at a piece of paper. So that's just my way of learning, and I hope you can unpack some of those as well as we talk about the image in front of us. So following the principles of their Thirty or White Target or Tail Maris or Mari Culture, educational psychologists often see wellbeing like a fuddy or a house that's a house in the middle

54:03
with four strong walls and a foundation and our child right at the centre.

54:09
So we talk about Tahiti Nana, which is our physical health. So this includes body language, energy levels, how alert a child is, how a child can navigate their space, can talk about things like balance and the way they sit, the way they carry themselves. We're looking to see how a child engages physically with their world.

54:35
We also talk about tahirul, so our spirit and our wellbeing and our beliefs. So it focuses on a child expressing their cultural identity, how they view themselves, how their confidence and spirit may be strengthened, and their feeling of belonging to their space, whether that's at school, home and community.

54:58
To Havana, which is all of you here today, You know our family and our relationships. So this will include immediate family, friends, cousins, teachers, community groups, and anyone that a child considers important in their life. So we ask how strong those child's connections are to those people, what the child can learn from each of those relationships and how these relationships shape the child's development and their identity. So people

55:29
that they connect with, how they present themselves as well, what do they consider themselves to be important to those people? So you know someone some might think, ohh, I'm my teacher's favourite student or you know, I'm Nana's favourite. How they are interacting with the people and what they bring to each other.

55:50
We also talk about Tahap Hernado, so our thoughts and our feelings. So we're asking what the child thinks of other people or an and themselves, How do they share their ideas and emotions. We also look at their learning, So what subjects they enjoy, what skills they have, their style of learning. So drawing, writing, building, movement, activities. So just like I said, you know, I'm more of a reader than I am a listener. And how the structure of school

56:22
helps them to participate and let their skills shine. So as Fodder and Olivia has said, we are looking at how a child can express themselves, what are their strengths, what can they bring to the table as well.

56:39
And most importantly, not mentioned on the on that image I can see, but it's tough. Fenia O our land place and our roots, which is the foundation that the house sits on. So it is a link to the land where we get our nourishment and connections. So where do we come from, who we are, what shapes us? It can also be the spaces where a child feels comfortable, safe and able to be themselves. So where they are

57:10
able to express all of these things in their four walls and be really grounded and and able to shine as well.

57:21
So when all these walls are tall and strong and sitting on a stable and safe foundation, our children can learn and grow well. So we work to strengthen each part of the fuddy or the house so that it offers protection and develop skills for the child's wellbeing.

57:40
So it also understand that children don't grow in isolation. There are many parts and layers of influence which you can see wrapping around the house or the funding. And each layer highlights key connections, experiences and wider systems that will help shape the child over time in space. So we call this model the Bronfenbrenner Ecological Systems theory, which is a lot of big words to just say your child is at the centre

58:11
and there's multiple layers of influence that impact the child's world as well.

58:18
So we've got the micro system, which actually is right in the should be actually right in the centre. This is your child's immediate world, your family, your school, your friends, and we work closely with these people to understand the child's needs,

58:35
the meso system which is just below it, which are the connections between those close relationships. So like all of my speakers have said, how the school and the home communicate, how the school communicates with other agencies, and how the home communicates with other people in their world as well. And we help build those strong bridges between these places as well.

59:00
The exhaust system, which is just the third layer out, these are things that affect your child indirectly. So like your workplace or your community services, we can consider how these might impact your child's wellbeing as well. So to give an example, if we are working with the family or school, who says child's neighbourhood school or child's not able to get here on time and is not, you know, being able to settle down in the morning,

59:30
you might actually ask and go, hey, mum and dad, is everything OK to get child to school at time as well? And if it's workplace or, you know, workplace commitments that are keeping you busy, we can start to unpack a little bit of those and say, what can we do to improve those systems as well?

59:49
The macro system, this includes culture, values and laws. So we respect everyone's traditions and beliefs, and we work to make sure your child feels safe and accepted. So with our migrant refugee families, just like myself, there will be things that we bring with us that we call them funds of knowledge. You know, we might not be able to express it or there might not be a word in English that says, you know, translate directly over to what we have. But we have experiences and we have knowledge.

1:00:22
That we can share and there will be a way to express that as well. And chrono system which is kind of wraps around everything. So this is about time and it measures life changes, migration and growing up. And we understand that moving to a new country brings big changes, but we're here to support that journey as well and see what can we draw from that journey

1:00:48
and yours as a skill to adapt to our new environment as well.

1:00:54
So as an Ed cycle, we work with children, families and school. We often come in when someone is finding learning hard. They're having difficulty sharing their emotions or having trouble making social connections or need support to feel safe and understood. At school, we listen to the child, we listen to the parents and we listen to the teachers. We visit homes and schools to understand the environment where the child spends their day, and we look at what's working

1:01:25
and what's not working on all sides of that fighter and all levels of the ecosystem as well. And we also connect with other agencies that may already be supporting you and working together to find ways to help. So like I say,

1:01:41
it does, uh,

1:01:43
often, you know, as when you say psychologist or therapist, we often get a picture of someone sitting on a couch with my glasses and taking notes and saying, asking how do you feel? But assessment is a big part of it. But what, what we're trying to unpack is assessment can be quite organic as well. It doesn't have to be questioned is it doesn't have to be very, you know, sit down workshop kind of things. But we are looking at all aspects of the child and their world

1:02:15
as well to see what we can draw from there.

1:02:19
So the Ministry of Education has many departments, Nasreen's one included, that helped the school to run. They set learning levels, they provide care and protection information for children, I'm sorry, and for teachers and help parents to navigate their children's access to education as well. So our in our practise as an Ed Sykes sits under the learning support department. So if you go from the family to the Ministry of Education across

1:02:49
and you can see the school and ECA, which is where your Sinclair will sit as well. And we sit just off to the side with learning support as well.

1:02:59
So I work with a team of other specialists that can also be called upon to support children if we need. And I have the great privilege of working alongside each one of our role presenter roles today. So the Sinco, the RTLB, they are usually my first point of call and they are what I depend on to connect with the school and parents as well. And I know CDCS disability, which is upcoming, covers wider areas across the city as well.

1:03:29
And that means my support can be on an individual level of the child or teacher, the whole class or meeting with senior leadership to impact the whole school practise. So just as Olivia talked about right now with the three tiers and HIPAA, Karua Ministry of Education follows the exact same practise. So if an RTLB is there or if a Cinco is there, we are all working within the same system and that should hopefully provide the consistency that we need.

1:04:01
Um, if you're worried about your child's learning or wellbeing, you can talk to their teachers or the school. They know how to connect with the ministry learning support team for your school. We also cover specific areas, but you can access all that information through your school as well.

1:04:19
If nothing else, our Moe parent portal, which if you just type that into Google it should show up, or the MO regional office details are all on our website for information on how to contact someone at your local office.

1:04:34
I put the Ministry of Health stuff in there just to say that we do have connections to them in some way. We can work alongside medical professionals and help schools to understand and accommodate A child's medical needs as well. Bearing in mind, like I say, neurodiversity is not just a diagnosis, it is a diverse way of your brain and your body functioning. So every child, every adult

1:05:05
will have a different way of experiencing the world of the way they have. They have been taught how to learn and the way that they take in knowledge and the way that they give that to other people as well. So we are looking to see what every child's unique perspective is.

1:05:24
We respect their culture and values and we want children to feel proud of who they are and where they come from. And we very much depend on walking alongside you as a family and to help your child's skills shine. And we always say thank you for sharing your children with us. I will leave it at that. And I can see a couple of questions that have popped up across the other speakers, and I'll be looking forward to answering a few of them in there, but I'll hand over to

1:05:55
our next speaker as well. So thank you very much for your time and attention.

1:06:03
Thank you, Tanya for that very informative. In short spill, which was good

1:06:10
coming, we've got the CCS Disability Action Group just to request Hummer and Tyler that

1:06:18
we may be running short of time. So you might just have 10 minutes. I hope you can cover your slides in 10 minutes.

1:06:26
So yes, we will try

1:06:31
Cuba.

1:06:32
Um, so our food presenter is Huma Yunus and she's a dedicated community support coordinator with CS Disability Action Group, which is based in Royal Oak in Auckland. She's got over 7 years experience in disability sector whom I has been instrumental in coordinating and delivering tailored support services for children with disabilities and their families, helping them navigate challenges and access the resources then they need to thrive. She's a registered social worker with a strong commitment

1:07:03
the inclusive and culturally responsive practise. In addition to her work in disability support, Huma brings valuable experience working with migrant and ethnically diverse communities, advocating for equitable access to services and fostering community engagement. Her compassionate approach combined with a professional expertise makes her trusted advocate for families in a respected member of social services community. She's going to be joined by one of her colleagues who's going to support her,

1:07:34
Tyler Mode. She's a Senior coordinator at CS Disability Action working in the Child Family Final team in Auckland and she has worked in this for past two years. With the background as a teacher aide in Pegasus unit at Pakuranga College and a Bachelor's degree in Health Psychology, she's passionate about supporting Fanhua in the far North through inclusive person centred practise. Over to you.

1:08:11
Thank you Nathan, big thank you to you for organising this and welcome everyone as some Nazarene share our intro. My name is Huma Yunus, I'm a community support coordinator with CC assessability action tiles around too. She will join us, me and Tyler will be sharing presentation about CC accessibility action and our services.

1:08:41
Introduction to CCS Disability Action We are the largest pan disability organisation, Altura supporting thousands of disabled people and their families nationwide,

1:08:53
advocating for accessibility, inclusion and human rights providing disability support services direct to disabled people, employment services and leadership opportunities partnering with local communities, businesses and government to remove barriers. Many people know Cici's disability action by original name, Crippled Children's Society. Today we are an organisation that supports people with impairment of all ages across the diverse

1:09:24
cultures of Altera. Our role is to work with communities to identify and remove barriers that prevent people from achieving their goals. Our commitment today is to partner with disabled people, their families and Fano to support them to have choice and control in their lives. While we would obviously prefer that all disabled people have equal opportunities and not need our support and involvement, we are still proud of the longevity of our commitment to serving their needs.

1:10:00
We were founded in 1935 by Doctor Alexander Gillies who, inspired by the polio pandemic of the 1930s and 1940s, mobilised Rotarians to take action to support children affected by polio.

1:10:15
In the 1970's the human right movement began to impact our approach. Today we are one of the largest disability support providers in the country and support people with all types of impairments.

1:10:31
Our approach final centred approach working in partnership with Tamariki children, Fano family and other professionals focus on mana enhancing, community based support commitment to T30 Theo white Sangi principles. We measure our success by ability to connect people with disabilities with a range of life opportunities at every New Zealander might reasonably expect, such as belonging in a family, fano and community, having friends

1:11:02
and relationship, having meaningful choices across all parts of life. This includes where to live, work and enjoy leisure activities. Also where and how to be educated, including lifelong learning, greater choice and control in life,

1:11:21
participating in the community, belonging culturally and spiritually in a way that has a personal meaning.

1:11:34
We work alongside disabled people, families, fano and communities across New Zealand. It's about being in partnership and supporting people to have the life they want.

1:11:44
The core of our approach is about building good relationships and getting to know disabled people and final well. We want to develop a sense of what is important to you and support you to be in charge of your life and living the life you want.

1:12:02
What this means is we often work outside box in more innovative and creative ways to ensure we offer quality outcomes for the people we support. As You See will broadly cover three main areas of work

1:12:15
across all our services. Our core work includes offering good information because it can be challenging, challenging for disabled people to get the information they need at the right time. Community Connections, which involve working with people to build relationship in their community. Find activities that match, intrust and connect with other people with similar experiences to them, or move into education and employment with support they need to succeed. Navigating and planning to assist

1:12:46
people to plan for the life they want. This includes identifying dream goal setting, planning to achieve these goals, Supporting people to work through complex systems, remove barriers and create the life they want. Connecting them with services you might need like equipment, disability support, transport options, resources, and funding. Coordinating so they can get the right people and right support at the right time. Advocacy, which can

1:13:17
involves supporting people to speak for themselves or providing independent support with other agencies or organisations.

1:13:32
Supported Lifestyle Under 19 or Sell under 19 is the contract we hold to support the people with disabilities and we work on this contract under Child, family and final team. Type of support offered under SL19 or Navigating Disability Sector. Supporting FINO to understand and access the services, support and resources available to meet the needs of their tamariki children.

1:14:00
Advocacy

1:14:01
advocate alongside fan or so they feel disability needs are not when they feel the disability needs are not being met. Goal based Working alongside tamariki and final to build support plan around their goals. Information Provide final with individualised information and the settings are a home community and own alongside school

1:14:25
referral process. Who can refer?

1:14:28
You can make a self reform referral or professionals for example Ministry of Education, District Health Board, local Nas such as Sky Karanga can make a referral. Other agencies such as Orange Tamariki Ministry for Children can make a referral. How to refer? Make an enquiry through our website.

1:14:50
We would love to continue the conversation with you. You can contact us by calling our 0800 number which is on the screen or e-mail us

1:15:00
on [email protected] dot NZ. We can. You can also connect us through our Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn page. The best way to contact us is to send an enquiry through to via our website. Thank you so much for your time.

1:15:19
Thank you. Um, Tyler, would you like to eat something today? Yeah, yeah, good everyone. My name is Tyler Mood. I work alongside Homer in our child family final team, as she mentioned. I just wanted to quickly add, I guess that we are, I guess a community based support. We can work alongside Phyno and schools when they do feel that there are disability needs not being met. Met.

1:15:49
Yeah. Uh, but **** summed it all up very perfectly. And, and we, we look forward to, I guess continuing conversations with you if that is this is something that you're interested in.

1:16:05
Awesome. Thank you, Huma and Tyler for that part of the presentation. It's, it's good to have a balance of what's happening in terms of support for the community as well and families as well. And obviously our other three presenters did a very good job of explaining what's happening in terms of the school. There are a few questions on the chat Q&A section of the

1:16:35
webinar which we're going to try and

1:16:38
answer. Hopefully there's some links that has been shared as well which you can look into.

1:16:44
My colleagues have

1:16:48
they've just posted a post webinar survey, which is a 62nd survey. It's going to call us. Just get you to spend 60 seconds to answer 4 questions.

1:16:58
While we are doing the Q&A, you can click on the link posted by Cynthia and if you can do the survey that would be really helpful for future webinars.

1:17:09
So I will bring up some of the questions and I'll open it to all the speakers in any one of you can answer those.

1:17:18
So the first question that I can see on my screen is from Yanni.

1:17:24
Do Moe psychologists conduct cognitive assessments?

1:17:32
So I'll take that question. Yes, I did. I did respond to Yanni as well. But some psychologists at the ministry are, yes, trained for cognitive assessments, but it is all dependent on the child's needs. So a cognitive assessment is not appropriate for every child. And part of the questions that we ask varna in school will determine if it is and which one. But just to say that a cognitive assessment

1:18:02
is not grounds for diagnosis, we would often refer, actually more often than not refer out to the Ministry of Health for our developmental paediatrician to do their own full health assessment alongside the cognitive assessment as well. So that it is a very comprehensive look at what is the need.

1:18:27
Hopefully that answers then.

1:18:29
Thank you. Tanya,

1:18:32
we have another question from Elmira. Can we request help just to use at home rather than at school?

1:18:40
I came across information that our teachers are doing everything and do not require help for the best benefit of our child.

1:18:49
A little bit unclear, but I think

1:18:52
I'm assuming Elmira, you are asking about funding.

1:18:58
If that's the case, then the funding is for the school, not for individual families. Am I correct in saying that

1:19:07
the presenters,

1:19:12
I can talk to that one? Yes, funding, if it is from the ministry or if it is from our TLB, LSF, anything like that, it is for use at school, it will, it can't be

1:19:25
translated to help at home. Depending on the need of the child though. So for example, if the child has wars funding that they get, parents can get some respite or even through Taikura Trust, etcetera. There are some trust in some agencies that can provide support. It depends what it is, what support you're looking for, if you're looking for funding or if you're looking for learning support or some behaviour support as well. So it would have to be, we'd have to unpack that a bit,

1:19:55
able to understand what the need is and then how that can be supported. So Elmira, if you did want to.

1:20:04
Maybe if, if you want to ask, give us more specifics, you could maybe e-mail that question to Nasreen and she can forward it to us so we can get back to you on that or you can add more information here. Tanya, I see has also responded to that one. Tanya, did you want to add on?

1:20:22
Yeah, I'd say I did say Emily's primarily school based, but we do provide strategies that can be used in the home as well. But it does referrals often only come from the school depending on what the need is for the child. There are a lot of community based support. So that might be able to advocate for home based care as well. And if there's, there's lots of parenting programmes

1:20:51
online and in person that will do support as well. So depending on the need of the child, yeah it would, it would a community organisation would be better to be to do that support.

1:21:06
Did you wanna go as well? Olivia answered the same question

1:21:12
and yeah, just thinking in terms of when I mentioned within a TLB referral, we often do create resources or similar things to the classroom to be used at home. So if it's part of a national beer referral, yes, there will be often some resources that can be used at home to support the child's learning. Otherwise, I would just suggest having a talk to your child's teacher and asking if there is anything, if they haven't got a current RT, I'll be referral for instance, you know, that could be something you could look at or is there something

1:21:42
that that you could be doing at home to support what your child's teacher is doing? And often they will be really happy just to have that conversation with you.

1:21:51
Thank you, everyone. And this question, I think it's for you, Olivia. Can a student have multiple

1:21:57
episodes of a TLB involvement?

1:22:02
Yes. So normally, we would do the 2 terms and then we would leave a probably at least a terms gap to ensure that the strategies from our last referral are being applied appropriately before then looking to make another referral if that's needed.

1:22:22
And we hope that the strategies like uncovered in the first referral would be enough that, that could be sustained by next year's teacher or the next school and so that they wouldn't be in need for another referral. But there are opportunities to have that everywhere. We do get referrals. And like I said, also for transitions between schools, that's often something that we will support with as well. Yeah. You wanted to add anything Hooda from your perspective perhaps

1:22:52
just to add on to what you said like the transition support, often times it does become a full RTLB case following the transition to point depending on the needs of the child and also the the needs of the child might change. So yes, there might have been referred for something this year and then next year you might find that actually something else has happened and they circumstances have changed. So definitely have students who've had multiple

1:23:18
referrals to the RTLB.

1:23:21
Thank you all, um, shown you've got multiple questions there. And I think part of the questions were answered through the presentations. So I'll just ask one of the questions from your post.

1:23:34
Do all students come with a formal diagnosis or is this sometimes identified in other ways?

1:23:45
Anyone. Yeah, I'm happy to answer that question, Sean. I might talk to her a little bit about all parts of your question as well, because you're talking about the intersection of neurodiversity and intercultural dynamics. What I will say is you're right, there is ways of looking at wellbeing that are very culturally specific as well. What I would encourage is a strained space or a skills based view as well. So when we talk

1:24:16
about, like I say, neurodiversity, it might just be that, ohh, we don't, we might not go down a pathway of diagnosis, but we can still say a child is struggling to recognise their phone names or the letter sounds or being able to write consistently for, you know, 20 minutes or a full page because they're not able to hold their body up. So if we look at a thing more of a skill that they need to develop and

1:24:47
actually go, this is how you develop a skill. This is, you know, help. Sometimes it's as simple as going ask your kids to help with the washing at home and you know, pulling the cloth pegs helps to develop their fine motor skills that will be required to hold a pencil for that much longer.

1:25:07
That's something a way of trying to bridge those things of life skills, learning skills,

1:25:14
like with a sensory needs as well. If there's too much noise going on around the child, sometimes a child might try to get louder than the noise and actually, you know, try to get over that and make themselves heard. Or there's the opposite where a child might shut down and say, well, nobody's going to hear me in this loud noise. I won't say anything anyways. So again, unpacking the dynamics of where that child exists and what is it that they are using or communicating through their behaviour

1:25:45
or even through their words that this is what I need. If I need attention, this is how I'm going to get it. If I need help to, you know, sit up and sitting on the mat without any back supporters drew hard, That's what they are communicating as well. So yeah, skills and strengths is A1 wonderful way of looking at it, regardless of whether there's diagnosis or anything. And if there is a diagnosis you can talk to one of the specialists to say hey we might need a little bit more support beyond just the basic practise as well.

1:26:19
Ignite. Ohh, can I add on

1:26:23
with the diagnosis, Not a lot of students don't come with the diagnosis as well. So it would be about contacting the appropriate person at that school and then them getting referrals through RTLB or making a paediatrician referral etcetera, depending on what it is. So going down that path of diagnosis can be helpful sometimes with peers. But as you mentioned, the the intercultural dynamics can actually be quite tricky there as well because in some cultures having a diagnosis

1:26:53
is considered like there's something wrong with you. So often times, you know, we have that at schools. And like you mentioned, Sean, there's different cultures perceive hold it differently. And that's absolutely true. And special needs differently. I think it's important to hear the funnel

1:27:10
and the child standing ground. That's the child's reality, their circumstances and their lived experiences.

1:27:18
And if you feel like that's, um, counteractive to what you're trying to achieve, then absolutely having a conversation with the panel and you know, so considering their cultural value, their cultural norms or dynamics, considering those, but trying to meet them halfway and saying, hey, how can asking them and saying, how can we support your child to achieve this? So actually bringing their expertise because they'll, they'll definitely have it. Hopefully their answers that

1:27:47
things with that. I'm Olivia.

1:27:50
Ohh, I just wanted to add on from what her was saying. And

1:27:55
you don't need a diagnosis in order to have an RTLB referral. Often we do work with a lot of children who do have this particular diagnosis. RTLB don't diagnose that's, you know, more your educational psychologists

1:28:12
or going to visit your GP. But you know, we can support with students who have diagnosis to make those changes in the classroom, support teachers to figure out strategies that are gonna work for those students. But again, you don't need to have diagnosis in order to apply or be accepted for TB support.

1:28:32
Awesome. We gonna wrap that up. Thank you to the speakers for taking out your time today. And I know you all had busy schedules from the morning. You, most of you have been at work and you managed to come in the afternoon and provide this presentation to our community. And we really appreciate it. We're going to close this hoe with the karakia and I'm going to invite my colleague Zara to

1:28:58
closes off with this correct key.

1:29:01
Thank you so much, Naz. Another huge thank you to our amazing panellist and everyone who attended the webinar. We learned so much from your insight and expertise and truly appreciate your time and contribution. Kia for Korea to topple, Keita to ara kya Turkey for Qatar. Hai kya Turkey for katai. Ohh yeah Tikia

1:29:28
cure everyone. Have a good night, Capitano.

1:29:31
Thank you.

 

Right, nau mai haere mai everyone, and a warm welcome to you all.

 

It's a pleasure to have you all with us this evening.

 

We will start very shortly, and we're very excited to have you joining us.

 

My name is Awad Hagos.

 

I am a senior advisor with the community partnership at the Ministry of Education.

 

So, as well as our guest, Chris, who I will introduce to you very shortly,

 

I am joined tonight by a few of my colleagues.

 

You'll see them in the screen in front of you.

 

We have Mastura Abdrahman, our team leader from Christchurch.

 

We also have Nazreen Shaban and Amanda Aye.

 

from Auckland.

 

We're also joined by Cinthia Soto from Wellington, and they will be helping us through our decision, looking after the questions and posting links and so on.

 

We're also hoping to be joined by one of the parents from the community to just shed some lights about her experience being a board member in the school.

 

She is funnily enough, she will be in a meeting as well, a board meeting at the time, but she will make some time to join us later on this session.

 

Her name is Judy MacMenigall.

 

So hopefully she will be able to join us later.

 

A couple of housekeeping for you.

 

As you can see on the screen in front of you, the cameras and microphones have been disabled just to make sure the session runs smoothly with very minimal disruptions.

 

This webinar is being recorded and the recording and the presentation will be shared with you hopefully tomorrow.

 

And please feel free to ask any questions throughout the sessions.

 

You can pop up your question in the chat function.

 

But the questions will be addressed properly at the end when we do the Q&A session.

 

But feel free to ask the questions throughout.

 

So just to make sure we don't forget them at the end.

 

We will have a survey webinar at the end, so please do request that you take part and fill it out.

 

It would be helpful for us to know how the session went and in the end that we can improve on.

 

Thanks.

 

Yeah.

 

So let's move on to the next part.

 

So I will invite my colleague Cinthia to pop a question for you.

 

It's a poll question.

 

We the aim of it is to get an understanding of how you understand school boards.

 

So the question is right in front of you on the screen.

 

Please choose the appropriate answer for you and we'll share the result with you shortly and then we will proceed.

 

Right.

 

That's an interesting result.

 

So not much and somewhat seems to be the dominant answers.

 

No one has put a lot, which is good.

 

And so, Chris, you've got some work to do.

 

You've got your work cut out for you.

 

Good for me.

 

Yes.

 

All right.

 

This brings me to our main speaker.

 

It's a great pleasure to introduce our guest speaker, Chris France.

 

Chris is a governance advisor at the Whakaru Putanga Kaitaki Kura or Aotearoa, otherwise known as NZSBA or New Zealand School Board Association.

 

Chris has years of experience delivering professional development for NZSBA, especially in Auckland and

 

at the national level as well.

 

Chris worked closely with many school boards across Auckland region to support best practice in governance.

 

He emphasizes the importance of a strong foundational governance practice around the board table.

 

Chris believes that effective school boards require pre-residing members to foster collaborative team dynamic, which is essential for positively impacting student achievement for our tamariki.

 

His involvement in education spans back to the s

 

with experience in teaching, publishing, information technology and governance.

 

Chris brings a comprehensive understanding of modern schooling and government theory to support excellence in school governance.

 

So in short, he is the best person to speak on the topic and we're very grateful to have him with us tonight.

 

Very well welcome to you, Chris, and the floor is yours.

 

Thank you.

 

So I shall take control now.

 

Yes, great.

 

Got that and away we'll go.

 

So, there we go.

 

Good evening, everybody.

 

And it's a privilege to sit and talk with parents and people who are considering sitting on a school board.

 

We always start school boards with

 

a Maori tradition, what is called tikanga.

 

And it's a thing called a whaka whanunatanga, which is getting to know each other, establishing links and connections to people.

 

And it's been a growing trend over the last years, really, that schools have increasingly understood that it's not just about learning policy and doing the work of a board, but also about knowing each other.

 

and knowing how to collaborate and work together while being able to hold personal views and stay firm to those while you discuss and come to important decisions about our children.

 

So Whakawhanaungatanga whanaangatonga is a very important thing.

 

As a short story, as I'd said, I've been chairing boards for -odd years.

 

In the last five years, I've begun to do more

 

of that lovely big long word there, Whakawhanaungatanga which is that we sit around the table and simply introduce ourselves.

 

At my last election, coming up two years ago now, our board of seven people spent two hours just sitting, talking, getting to know each other, getting to know any family connections, where we came from, how we got to be on a school board, why we're interested in being on a board.

 

The discussion and the strength of talking together has been a very, very powerful driver, I think, for our board this term, for the last two years, being the most effective board I think we've had at the school.

 

And I'm on the chair at a school at Otahahu.

 

And sorry, just excuse me.

 

I've got to go.

 

I can't stop, sweetie.

 

I'm on public television.

 

Got to go.

 

So, Whakawhanaungatanga is a really, really important thing to do.

 

And it's something that I encourage all schools to do and to invest the time in it.

 

Because making your team work around the board table is probably one of the most important things you will do.

 

So let's go on to what we will cover today.

 

We'll probably cover this in the following sections.

 

Basically, first of all, what is a school board?

 

What do school boards actually do?

 

Because there's a bit of myth around that out there, to be fair.

 

Who can be a board member?

 

How do I become a board member?

 

And hopefully we can answer your questions before you move to the survey at the end of the session.

 

What's in a name?

 

The Education Act

 

that has been enforced since defines governance and management in schools, among other things.

 

And that was updated in 

 

So some of you might hear different terms.

 

The current word for a member of a school board is a board member, but you'll hear lots of people probably still saying they're a school trustee.

 

And the terms are still both there, but the current term under the

 

Act that came in converted us to being school boards.

 

We are members of school boards.

 

And you can still call your board chair the board chair, but the legal term for your presiding member is just that, a presiding member, the person who presides over the meeting.

 

So they're pretty standard things.

 

It's just useful to know.

 

We are governing and managing schools in New Zealand and they are

 

terminologies that if you read what goes on in the business world and lots of big charities, almost everything you see happening in governance and management is the same.

 

So we're not a different model.

 

We've got some little things we do differently, but generally speaking, governance is pretty the same all around the world.

 

Awad, quick question.

 

Is that pace of speech and talking about right?

 

Yep, good.

 

Okay, just don't want to go too fast to people and let them have a chance to follow through.

 

So what is a school board?

 

So a school board in New Zealand, a school board is what's called a crown entity.

 

It is in fact therefore a special kind of government department, which means when you sit on a school board, you are doing things

 

at one level on behalf of the Crown, because we're a Crown entity.

 

If you like, you could say that the Crown is the legal owner of schools, and a school board also has obligations and probably some expectations about being very clear that we also act on behalf of the community, our parent community, and the people indeed in and around the school.

 

You could reasonably say that

 

A board also, to a degree, acts on in collaboration with its local community, businesses and so on, because you are a part of a broad community.

 

School boards are self-governing.

 

So what that means is that the Crown says we are delegating the authority from

 

the government for you to oversight the school.

 

You will help manage and oversight what is going on inside the school through a principal and teacher.

 

So the board is the direct connection to look after a range of areas, for instance, finance, property, looking after employment, looking after the health and safety of people who are in the school, students, staff.

 

even visitors to an extent when a school is open.

 

So a school board carries legal obligations to look after the school.

 

I will hasten to say, just so you can relax and not get anxious about it, that the Crown's also very aware that we are people who give our time freely when we sit on school boards for a pretty low honorarium, and we will discuss that a little bit later.

 

But it means the Crown in the Act has made it really clear that as long as board members are acting in good intent, so you're acting with the best interests and you're doing the best you can for schools deliberately and openly, there is no legal consequence or comeback for you for anything that goes wrong on a school.

 

So the heart of the matter is if you go onto a school board, give it your best effort,

 

Do everything you can to abide by the law and act in the best interests of the Crown and the community.

 

There is no liability that can be placed against you and no cost that can be put against you.

 

So just act with good intent.

 

So relax and enjoy the job.

 

It's huge fun.

 

As Awad said, I've been doing it for years.

 

I love working on school boards.

 

I love working alongside principals and other parents.

 

trying to provide more value from my experience, just like you would from yours, to assist your children and other children in your school.

 

On a school board, there are people who are from within the school automatically and by election, and there are community members.

 

So A principal from the day they become the principal or when a board is elected, the principal is automatically a member of the board.

 

At the same time as parents are elected in a three-yearly election, at the same time there is an election run alongside the parent election for a staff member.

 

A staff member means one of the people employed by the board in the school.

 

So it could be a teacher, it could be a teacher aide or a support member.

 

There have been times when it's been people who run the grounds and look after other bits and pieces.

 

So

 

The staff representative is a representative of the staff, not just a teacher.

 

Commonly more likely to be a teacher, but that's not a legal requirement.

 

And then if you're in a high school, then the high school must have a student representative who is elected by the student body.

 

And that is done every year because students come and go quite quickly.

 

Most of the time we would expect student trustees to be reasonably senior students.

 

And so a year after they took the job, they probably moved on to university or their next step.

 

So we replace the student trustee annually.

 

So on the community side, what you have are parent representatives, the normal school board to which most of you would belong,

 

We'll have from three to seven.

 

The common number is 

 

So there are five parent electors plus a principal and a staff trustee.

 

So you end up with seven people on a board.

 

All the international evidence suggests that a board of seven or eight people is an ideal size.

 

You can go a little bit bigger.

 

You could add a couple of people on by what you can see at the bottom there, a process called co-option.

 

where the board could identify they've got a particular need on their board that they would like to fill for a period of time up to three years in term.

 

So all those people come to the board table and then the last line steps in there.

 

And in my head, the last line is the most important comment on the screen.

 

Every board member at a school board meeting is equal.

 

So it's important to note you have the equal right to speak.

 

The principal at a board meeting, when they're a board member, has got no more authority than you as a parent elected board member.

 

So a board is a team of equals.

 

It's a really important concept.

 

And it's meant to empower and make sure that people will realise that in that meeting they have an equal right to speak with anybody else.

 

Whether you're a married mum, an unemployed dad, a business owner, an accountant, or a principal, when you sit around a board table, you are equal.

 

You've got equal standing in the eyes of other people.

 

You have an equal vote.

 

That's really important.

 

Every member of the board gets one vote.

 

And the only exception is

 

is that if the board is discussing a vote on something and the vote is an equal sort of three each, then the presiding member carries what's called a casting vote.

 

They get one extra vote in order to give a decision rather than things being tied up.

 

But other than that, everything that a board member does, they have an equal vote for.

 

And the last one's really important to note.

 

A board member, every member of the board is equally accountable for everything that happens in the school.

 

So when you decide to invest in some particular thing in the school, you're equally accountable for that decision once the board decides that's what's going to do.

 

That should suggest to you that being a nice quiet little person that sits at the board and listens but doesn't speak isn't going to help you because you will still be accountable.

 

So I think you need to be very clear if you're going to come to the board, be able to speak, be able to give your voice to the table.

 

You bring a set of skills and backgrounds that is critically important.

 

And in the diverse, broadly based communities that we now have in New Zealand, we need to hear what your views on the world are on the big issues that the school is confronting.

 

Yep, and I'm sure that you'll fix that.

 

So that's quite an important slide.

 

Did you know?

 

So it's a mutual things.

 

Basically, school boards are the biggest single group of crown entities in New Zealand.

 

There are about school board members in New Zealand at any one time.

 

Two and a half thousand schools, five to seven or eight people.

 

plus a scattering of others.

 

There are a lot of people who serve on school boards every year.

 

I think it's a really interesting part of New Zealand culture that when you think over years, there's probably something approaching people in the community now who've spent some time, probably about three to six years, on a school board.

 

There are /thousand schools in New Zealand.

 

The majority of those are state, so they're government schools.

 

There are or I think, maybe a bit less than that, what we call state integrated schools.

 

So they would be Catholic, Muslim, Presbyterian, other special character schools where a proprietor, the church or the faith, has a group of people who sit on the board alongside the elected people from the last slide.

 

because they want to ensure that in an integrated school, the special character or faith beliefs of their community and their belief system are visible and able to be applied within the school, within the context of the Education Act that New Zealand operates under.

 

So you've got to fulfil the curriculum and all the deliveries that the New Zealand government requires, but you are entitled in integrated schools to also ensure that your belief systems

 

are identified and applied within the clearly provided rules of legislation.

 

I think it's a very powerful thing to see in New Zealand.

 

And what else do you want to do?

 

Down the bottom there, there's a little note that boards set the strategic direction of the school.

 

The principal puts that into action, and we'll do a little bit more on this in a minute.

 

But boards set the direction of the school.

 

So your voices,

 

bring into the ideas of the board and the principal once every three years, how important are the student outcomes and learning outcomes for our tamariki, for our children?

 

How do we feel about their well-being?

 

How do we feel about their ability to understand the culture they live in New Zealand?

 

There are a number of strategic big

 

goals that a board should put in place every three years that set the core outcomes that the school is trying to achieve in three years.

 

The principal's job is to go away with the staff and write an annual implementation plan, a plan that then delivers that goal in bits and pieces over three years and assures the board that it's all going on.

 

So

 

The board writes its plan to reflect parent expectation and government expectation.

 

The principal comes to meetings, and that's what you go to meetings for really, to give you an assurance and evidence we're on track.

 

We said we're going to get children in this year level to get to this level in learning outcomes.

 

I can tell you at mid-year we are on track or we're behind track, but we're doing this to fix it up.

 

So the board's a critical part

 

of ensuring that the school is progressing the big outcomes the school is trying to achieve.

 

What do school boards do?

 

So we'll do a bit of a look into that little section now, and here's the first slide on that.

 

So #is the thing we said a minute ago.

 

Our job as board members is to bring the community's voice to the table.

 

It's not that you go out and

 

poll them and quiz them and then come to a board meeting and say, I've talked to my Maori community or my Pasifika community or whatever community and this is what they want because you're elected to put that voice for your brain on the table, but you are the community's voice.

 

If you've got men and women

 

And if you've got Maori and Pacifica and Chinese, Singaporean, Indian, whatever your nationality is, that's a voice that reflects part of your community.

 

And what a board wants to hear is those belief systems when questions come to the table so the board can say, so how do we make sure that gets reflected in the way the school does things?

 

We are active leaders of the school.

 

I am a great believer in this.

 

So we set the big high level, we want our kids to be happy and we want our kids to be achieving and then we monitor progress.

 

We are also people who sometimes have to go out to our community and say, we think we need to be doing more and we need your help.

 

We think that we can do better than this.

 

How can we engage and get you and help?

 

You know, the board's an active leader of its community.

 

We're not just passively

 

taking from community and talking about it at the table.

 

We are taking the things we learn from the government and from everybody else and saying, for the sake of your children, we think we could do better here.

 

Will you join us in a journey to improve the learning of our children?

 

Which is why the setting strategic direction is so important.

 

We also have a very major job to write policy.

 

Now there's lots of policy in schools these days, but

 

But policy is, if you like, putting in writing the ideas, belief systems and expectations that the government as the owner and the community as the moral people who want a voice about their kids.

 

We want to express that in policy because that provides guidance within which the principal has to operate.

 

So if a school has policies or policies, then

 

That creates a set of walls, if you like, around the principle that says, this is what our community's expectations are.

 

What you do in your plan every day with staff needs to stay true to what the policies say.

 

So boards write policies and then boards get assurance from the principal from meeting to meeting.

 

We're complying with, we are meeting the expectations of what policy has said.

 

The big ones sitting in there are things like, are all the resources, the money and the property being well used and well looked after?

 

Principal needs to alert aboard that's happening.

 

Is everybody in the school emotionally safe and happy and physically safe?

 

And you think back to COVID, and I'm guessing most of you were here during COVID.

 

That was a huge learning curve.

 

We know now it's much more important that we play an important role in that.

 

As board members, we're there for all students, every student.

 

We're not there to advocate for our particular group, for people who we, or a community group we come from.

 

You sit on a board, our expectation is if there are kids in your school, your job's to ensure that all of those children are getting the educational outcome, the equity that they deserve.

 

Boards and principals, who does what?

 

Really interesting.

 

So we have the same vision, the principal as the manager of the school with the staff and the board on behalf of the government and the community.

 

We both have the same vision for our school, whatever that might be, but we have different roles.

 

Boards govern, they sit very high level.

 

We don't want to be sitting inside the school monitoring and watching how many pencils the kids have got.

 

and whether there's enough bikes to ride around in the playground.

 

That's the principal's job.

 

The board's job is to agree and set what the expectations are, what success might look like, what being a healthy, safe school with good play equipment might look like.

 

We can describe that picture, and then the board sits back and says, hey, principal, can you now go away and ensure that that's what happens in the school?

 

We don't have time, and you'll see why in a minute.

 

to be involved in the day-to-day running.

 

We've got to sit above that, if you like.

 

You can imagine a board sits in a helicopter and has a line running down to a boat floating around on the sea, and the captain's sitting on the deck in the boat with all the kids running around on the deck.

 

And the board sends its expectations for policy and the plan down through the wire to the principal.

 

He runs it and sends you up a report.

 

We don't get dabbled around and help pick the kids up when they bruise a knee in the playground.

 

That's the principal and the staff's job.

 

Schools are successful when the board and the principal both understand who will do what.

 

And that just takes a little bit of practice, but we all get there eventually.

 

how are we going here?

 

Yep.

 

much time I need to commit.

 

So here's why you can't afford to get used to interfering in what goes on in the school.

 

You will probably have somewhere thing like to meetings a year.

 

All international practice and indeed New Zealand law says that a board meeting will take, should take about two to /hours.

 

My experience is if you go beyond two hours, people are just tired.

 

Board meetings usually happen early evening.

 

All of you will probably, like me, be running a full-time day job, and then we hop into the car and dash across the city.

 

If you're in Auckland, that can take a while.

 

So you can attend a board meeting that starts probably about o'clock.

 

And you've probably not had a dinner, so you should push really hard, but your board can put you on at least a fish and chips or a pizza or

 

Some like Kai that mean you've got something to eat because you've been working all day.

 

I personally think a light meal with a board meeting by the way is really good because it gives you a chance to stop, sit down, put the day's work behind you and all the problems of that and refocus your head onto we're now going into the job where we govern the school.

 

And so a bit of Kai, catching up with people, how are you, how's your child's broken leg,

 

how's your wife, all that stuff.

 

That chat and a bit of food together reestablishes the connection the board has before it gets on with the important work of a board meeting.

 

But notice what it says there.

 

Eight to meetings.

 

So let's say it's meetings and they're /hours each.

 

You can meet for hours a year to govern the school

 

You can do some homework like the next line says.

 

and you might be on a committee or two if you want to have committees.

 

But if you take hours, that's the time you've got to govern.

 

Your principal, just so you know, in New Zealand, the average school principal spends something like to /thousand hours a year managing their school.

 

So if they've got /to hours to manage the school and they've got or or or staff,

 

who each have another two or three hours and hours, and you've got hours to govern.

 

You have not got time to play around in all the fine detail of school.

 

You've got to get your principal bringing you the information that assures you, gives you confidence the school's doing the things the principal's plan said it would do.

 

And that's what board meetings are really doing.

 

Are we following our policy?

 

Are we online with our plan?

 

Is it getting us to where we said it would be by this time of the year?

 

If not, why not?

 

And hey, Principal, how can we help get us to there?

 

Do we need to reprioritise some money?

 

Do we need to be doing something about different PD?

 

You know, whatever it is, that's where the board's work does.

 

So this is a really important page.

 

It begins to make you realise you've got limited time

 

Your focus has got to be very clearly on being quite strategic, quite what we call helicopter view, if you're going to do the best you can for all the kids in a school.

 

There's usually a bit of pre-reading, and it depends how your board works.

 

You may get a paper pack.

 

Increasingly, you're probably going to have access to.

 

The school may even provide you with a laptop if you haven't got one.

 

It's a lone computer, or what they call a net computer.

 

They will probably log all your files onto something like Mr.

 

Google.

 

And Mr.

 

Google or a number of other packages will store all the school data.

 

So you'll either get a paper pack or an electronic pack, and you'll probably get that about a week before the meeting.

 

You should certainly ask for it a week before the meeting.

 

And you do just a couple of hours.

 

You read, think about it, scribble questions on it that say, you know, oh, I need to ask the principle about why did that happen.

 

No, that's not on budget.

 

Why isn't that working?

 

Do we need to help?

 

That sort of thing.

 

So you use the pre-meeting time to prepare the questions you want to ask, and then the meeting time is sharing and debating the issues that arise as you go.

 

Some boards have additional meetings.

 

For instance, you could have a meeting near the end of the year or mid-year to begin the planning of your next strategic plan for the school.

 

I always have a special board meeting at the end of January with my board and we talk about the board's code of conduct.

 

We talk about what the board wants to do in its plan of work for its meetings a year in January.

 

So, you know, there are other meetings you might call, but it would be one or two.

 

Some boards have committees.

 

I'm not personally a fan.

 

I've never used committees in my time at O Tahu Intermedia.

 

other than for student behaviour.

 

There's special kinds of meetings and we don't need to cover them tonight.

 

But you can have committees for things like finance and health and safety and curriculum.

 

My personal instinct is you've got a very highly paid, capable principal running your school.

 

They should be able to bring you the data you need without the board putting itself in between.

 

But that's a board's decision to make.

 

You can make that.

 

The Education Review Office, if you like, the ERO, is the auditor of schools.

 

They come and help in a quite low-key, supportive way these days.

 

to ensure that schools are doing the things they said they were doing and they're legally compliant and they're keeping children safe and they're delivering the outcomes they've said they're going to do.

 

So they're the Crown's auditor to check that what the school's doing in educational terms is doing what it should do.

 

And then there might be the odd school event.

 

So my school last week, we opened a full immersion bilingual unit for

 

Tongan and Pacific students and sorry, Tongan and Samoan units.

 

And we spent /a morning there celebrating with the Tongan and Samoan communities the opening of those special classes.

 

If you had units opening in your school that were immersion in your particular community's interest, the same sort of thing might apply.

 

Meeting fees.

 

Currently, the law says that a board member will receive $for a meeting.

 

that has no tax on it, no ACC or any other costs, and the presiding member gets just because there's extra workload on a presiding member.

 

Some schools decide they want to pay a bit more than that and there is no legal impediment to it, but you need to know that if you decide as a board to pay yourself more, you will pay secondary tax and you will pay costs for accident compensation.

 

So

 

There's a balance of do we want the aggravation of doing that, or we sit with it.

 

It's not meant to be a paid job.

 

It's meant to be a job that you give your time to, what we would call in New Zealand an honorarium.

 

Who can be on a school board?

 

So here we go.

 

We're already at about 

 

Yep.

 

Who can be on school board?

 

So just about anyone, actually.

 

Parents of students, caregivers, doesn't have to be parents.

 

It can be anybody from the wider community.

 

I know kids who've dropped out, come out of high school, and they're a -year-old university student who volunteer and get elected onto school boards.

 

I know senior businessmen.

 

I know retired business people, men and women who go and give time to boards, doctors, dentists, bankers, you name it.

 

We see all of them.

 

We see people who just simply walk in and say, I would like to be on the board.

 

So as long as they are, if you like, of good character and have no problematic criminal records in the New Zealand terms, as long as you have got a residency for more than months, you can be on the scoreboard.

 

So, you know, it pretty much is open to anybody.

 

Warm, breathing, living persons can stand for the board.

 

And as you can see in there, increasingly what COVID has taught us and we've learned over the years is the more diverse a board is, the more likely it is that it will reflect the community it represents.

 

And so we are looking to see boards broaden their base, which is why this session in my head is so valuable.

 

What skills?

 

There's a lot of talk over the years that it should be accountants and doctors and dentists and bankers and lawyers.

 

I Chris.

 

Excuse me, Chris.

 

Yep.

 

I guess Judy's here and I'm just conscious that she probably need to pop back to a meeting.

 

Oh, yep.

 

Do you want me to stop sharing?

 

I know you're gonna just gonna take it back, aren't she?

 

Yep.

 

That's fine.

 

Go for your live.

 

Welcome, Judy.

 

You're on mute.

 

Sorry, thank you very much.

 

I'm so sorry I'm a bit late.

 

No, thank you for making the time to join us.

 

We really appreciate it.

 

My pleasure.

 

Right.

 

What would you like me to say?

 

Chris was just talking about people like yourself who give up their time to be on the boards.

 

And I understand you have a meeting just now when you make the time to come.

 

I'm in a meeting.

 

So I think it would be lovely to hear your experience as a board member from the community, as a mom, as a parent.

 

Just to share your experience from your perspective, how did you find the experience?

 

What motivated you to be on the board?

 

What do you enjoy most about being on the board and so on?

 

So just a sense of what it is like.

 

Sure.

 

Well, it was an accident because I didn't really think board was a thing for me because I didn't quite understand how it all works, but I was

 

Obviously, my three kids have gone started school, so I thought once I started my third child started primary school, I was like, Right, I'm gonna join the PTA or CCIA, what they call it now, Community in Actions or PTA, and I was looking forward to joining it because that's more fun, you know, due to the fundraising and do all sorts of other stuff.

 

But because I'm actually sorry, I start with, I attend, my children attended the St.

 

Mary's Catholic School, which is an integrated primary school.

 

And so because I go to church with my children, obviously my...

 

The priest at school, at church and the school principal obviously noticed because I've had three kids at school for almost years.

 

And so they've noticed me since the beginning.

 

And so the priest thought, well, she's a good Catholic person that comes to church every day.

 

And so he recommended to the principal for me to join as a proprietor's rep, for the bishop proprietor's rep.

 

And I didn't know about it.

 

One day I got called into the office and said, Judy, we'd like to nominate you to be a proprietor's rep on the board.

 

I was like, uh-oh.

 

I was really terrified because I had no idea how the board works.

 

So I was reluctant to say yes, but I thought, you know what?

 

I know how parent PTA works.

 

So I thought it would be an interesting thing to do because the only thing I worry about is what you said before, I'm not a lawyer or an accountant or any other thing.

 

I'm just a mum, you know, I mean, having worked for the last years.

 

So I was really reluctant on what I can contribute as a stay-at-home mum with three young kids.

 

So I was a bit reluctant, but then I thought, you know what, it would be good to know because I'm the kind of person that

 

things not working well at school.

 

I don't want to complain.

 

I want to find a solution rather than complaining about it.

 

So, but I need to know how those process works, because you don't really see how the school is run from the surface with there being a classroom area.

 

So when you, when I got to the board, actually my, I'm very lucky.

 

My school is the school that I.

 

on the board is so amazing.

 

We have a really awesome board of trustees members and the school is very good supporting new members.

 

So they really make me feel welcome.

 

They encourage me to, you know, they've lots of stuff that they give you information.

 

I mean, obviously there's a lot of reading required and, you know, they lots of jargon.

 

So you get to know those things as time long.

 

I've been on the board for now six years.

 

I loved it.

 

I really enjoyed it because I got to understand how the school works and how much time and energy and effort the teachers and the principal has put in, to think about the student at school.

 

And so you sort of understand when things are doing in a way that you think, why are they not doing this?

 

You learn the process of why they do it.

 

And then you understand this is the reason why, rather than judging, jumping straight into the conclusion of this is not the way to run the school, rah rah rah, and then you hear from other parents.

 

So that was really good for me to realize, they are doing their best, they are doing everything they can do in order to, give our children opportunity.

 

So I really enjoyed that.

 

And, because I was worried about what I can put in,

 

But it was really good because the kind of question that I asked will be what most parents will want to know or want to ask about.

 

So that helped me understand.

 

And the biggest thing I learned was how to appoint a principal.

 

During my six years, I had to, we had, we appointed principal and I would recommend any school, any think twice about, you know, letting a principal go because it is not an easy task.

 

It is not an easy job.

 

And we really, you know,

 

put all our hats together and trying to find the best fit principal for the school.

 

And I really thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

took like months of the process.

 

And I really, it was really interesting to see how difficult it is to find a principal.

 

Yeah.

 

And just it's all come down to how your board is.

 

sometimes

 

certain board members have agenda, the reason why they come on the board, and I would recommend that nobody should go onto the board with an agenda of your own, because it is not about you, it is about the collective of the school.

 

And so you're not actually, you know, trying to pass any type of, I know, popularity.

 

It's more like what the governance, because you're not getting involved in day-to-day running of the school.

 

It's overall like how the students are performing.

 

how the teachers are doing.

 

So you're not getting down to the nitty gritty bit.

 

You're actually finding out that, you know, we're keeping our staff happy.

 

Are the principal doing their job and, you know, are they taking accountability for whatever decision that they make, which will affect eventually this children's learning.

 

So yeah, it really opened my eyes and I would, it is scary at first, but I'll always encourage anybody who is willing to put yourself out there

 

to give it a go.

 

And I would say I'm a lucky one because my position at school board is not elected.

 

It's my role as a proprietor's rep stays on because being a Catholic school, you need to have three proprietors rep plus the normal board members.

 

And so my role keep rolling until I either retire or I handed my resignation or I

 

I don't do a good job and principal let me go, so it's been pretty good to serve with different people that comes on the board, and if the school is doing great and as the principal is very open-minded and nothing to hide, it's really wonderful to be on the board and have a very open-minded because there's a lot of things that you hear.

 

And if one thing that is a confidential, confidentiality is really, really important because you're as a board member, you're not speaking as yourself, you know, you're speaking as a collective. So whatever decision that comes out, and if the parents say, oh, you know, what do you think about this? And you always have to have that, I guess, you know, integrity of this is not me speaking, you know, so things like that. So it made me understand that I can't just speak my mind.

 

because it is not about me, it's about the collective of the board and the school. So yeah, there's a lot of things I really, I enjoyed and I will encourage any parents who want to be on the board to put yourself out there because I think I'm not sure most people will know.

 

majority of the time you have to go in elections. I think next year is a school board election coming up. So you put your name out there, you write a little blurb about yourself or why you want to be on the board, and then people will vote for it. And then that's how you get elected. So yeah, so I always say, don't be afraid. Put yourself out there. You'll learn a lot and you'll understand how hard the teachers work and the principal works, you know, to get the best for your children at school.

 

So that's me. I hope it covers everything that you want to know. Thank you. Thank you. That's really lovely. I appreciate it. I think the main takeaway is it's a form of community service. It's not about, you know, that particular family who wanted to. It's helping everyone. In the process, you'll be helping your own family as well, but it's

 

Looking at the bigger picture, it's a form of community service. And I'm glad that you spoke honestly about being scared because this is daunting for parents from ethnic communities. And that's why we're doing this webinar to try to shed some light and see, share some ideas and just get people to understand what the ins and out of being on a board member. So I appreciate your time, Judy. I'm just wondering before you go, if someone has any quick question for you before you dash out.

 

Anyone has a question in the chat? Please don't be scared. I mean, I would, you know, encourage again, as I said, give it a go. You know, put yourself out there. I know some people like to think that it's a popularity contest, but if you're truly, you know, want to make a difference at your school, even small little things, you will understand how the school works.

 

and that you will really appreciate how much teachers and principal put their time and energy into running the school. And they will give you a different perspective on why do they not have tablets in every classroom for every single child. So those little things that you think is a big deal, then you realize when you get to the board,

 

there is funding that needs to be considered. there's some, when teachers are sick, they need to have replacement or, substitute teachers. So a lot of things goes into running a school and it's not just about one small little thing that happened in the classroom. So it gives you more perspective on, the bigger picture rather than the small little thing that goes on in the classroom level. Awesome. Thanks, Judy. Thank you. Doesn't seem to be any questions for you. I think it's very clear.

 

Thank you. Thanks again. We appreciate your time. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you, Awad. Thank you. Thank you. Awesome. Bye, everybody. Bye. Bye. So I just continue on, Awad. Yes, back to you, Chris. Yeah. So it's really interesting that Judy spoke then, because what she talked about was this stuff, really, that you need to work well in teams. That's the most important skill of all. Can you sit around the table?

 

and have discussion with other people and have firm beliefs on important issues and debate and talk about them without having to get into any sort of a fight about it. It's just different perspectives, different backgrounds, different views of the world. You want to get all those views on a table. So it's really, really important to be able to understand and think about the documents you read when you get ready for a meeting, to be able to think and talk about questions that test

 

every person who brings a different life skill to a board table, whatever that might be, gives them a different view on a question that might be in front of the board. My experience is if you get six different views on a particular discussion or idea that needs to be resolved, six different ideas are better than five the same. Because you will explore different ways and what you end up with then is

 

a better answer that's more likely to suit more people in the community. So really important. You need to be able to be able to talk and converse with people. You need to be passionate and energetic and honesty and integrity is just part of the territory.

 

territory. So that's absolutely cool. How do you become a board member? So the school will appoint what's called a returning officer. That's, if you like, an election officer who runs and manages the election for the school. And Awad other than this has just put something up in there, a couple of documents or Nazreen's put it up there. So there is a person who's in charge of running the election for the school.

 

There will be forms, the school newsletter will put information out. So if you are all with children at a school, then you know you can go into the office. The next election will be won by September I think it is next year. So somewhere about three months before that, next year there'll be notices starting to go out from the school saying we're about to enter the election process if you're interested.

 

and all the forms and documentations, what's called a nomination form is there. And then what happens is that, as I say, there, most boards are looking for five people. So everybody leaves the board when there is an election. All bar the principal basically leaves the board. There's no gap, but literally one day they're not on the board. The next day there's an election and a new board takes office. So

 

There are always going to be vacancies for an election. There are exceptions, but they're not important tonight. So if five people put their hat in the ring to become a member of the board and you're only wanting five people, then you are going to be automatically on the board. If people apply for five positions, then a voting paper will go out to every parent

 

of a student in the school. And those paper votes, in fact, it's going to be electronic, I think, next year. So by some electronic method on your phone or a computer, people will be asked to read the nomination Forbes for the six or seven or eight candidates and pick the one they like the best and send in the papers. And the highest polling candidates win the election

 

And seven days after votes end, all of which takes place in about a two or three week period, seven days later, you are officially and legally the new members of the school board. There's lots of information up there on the various bits and pieces sitting in the chat feed. And all of that stuff sits on the New Zealand School Boards Association website, which if you do a quick Google for New Zealand School Boards Association,

 

You'll flex straight after our website. It's all public information that you can go and explore at every time. Just to whip through into the next piece, how do I get nominated? So there is a form that's available at the office. You can nominate yourself, in which case you'd fill in both the candidate and nomination form. You might know a parent who's got kids at the school and you could say, would you nominate me, please?

 

and you would sign your BIP, but they would nominate you. And once that's done, those then are put into the office and the returning officer gets that done and you must do it within an agreed date that is visibly clear and on all of that documentation. You are entitled, as Judy said, to write a candidate statement. So that's a statement about who and what you are.

 

It can include a photograph, and I would urge you to use a photograph, as long as that's culturally appropriate. We really want to know a little bit about you. Parents want to know who and what you are. They don't want to know necessarily that you're a doctor with a PhD in rocket scientist. What they want to know is that you're a parent, that you've got kids in the school, or that you want to be on the school board because you have a knowledge

 

that you want to share and you want to give your time to your community. They want to know who you are as a person. That's my real belief over time. It's useful to outline your abilities and the qualifications you've got, where you've got that. Any involvement with the school, sporting clubs, running sports teams in the school, anything like that you've done, what your interests are, anything else that would be linked to the education of children at the school and why it would make you an attractive candidate.

 

So in summary, every state in the state integrated school has to have a board to govern it. The board's role is to set what and why the school is there. The principal's role is to manage all that and turn it into practice. You are an equal member of the team with everyone else on the board, male, female, disabled, fully abled, whatever you might be. If you're on the board, you are equal in everything. You must never forget that.

 

Anyone can be a board member. All your skills are welcomed and valued. And we believe that diversity is a key to the board's success and a true representation of your school community. And the more of that we can do, the better. Just very quickly, who is NZSBA? So we've changed our name from trustees because they don't exist anymore, to who is NZSBA?

 

We are a national organisation.

 

I'm one of their employees.

 

We have about people who provide support to boards in how to run good meetings, how to manage school finance, how to manage school property, how to manage our employment responsibilities, how to manage health and safety, how to understand what good achievement looks like in a school.

 

We run courses and programmes face to face.

 

We run them online in webinars.

 

On our website, there are literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of five-minute vignette webinars, documents, materials.

 

There is a mountain of stuff there.

 

We have an chat line that is open from about in the morning to at night.

 

There are six or seven stunningly capable people who will confidentially answer any question you like.

 

So

 

You know, there is a huge amount of support there if you want it.

 

It's just a matter of asking for it.

 

You never need to feel alone.

 

And there we go.

 

Awad.

 

Awesome.

 

That's wonderful, Chris.

 

Thank you very much.

 

Question time.

 

I'm sure you have lots of questions.

 

So please pop them in the chat function area.

 

And did we answer the one or two questions we already had, Awad?

 

I will pop them now so everyone can see them, the questions, and probably you can have a go at answering them.

 

That would be great.

 

I think you've answered this one, but I'll share it with you anyway.

 

This is one question from the audience.

 

Yes, we did answer this.

 

So you do not have to be a parent of children at a school, as I say.

 

There is a huge range of people in the community from people who I've seen a couple of board members who are blind and some who are deaf.

 

And those boards find ways to make that work.

 

And it works really, really well.

 

And we've got people of every different

 

variation of lifestyle and manner.

 

Doctors, dentists, farmers, unemployed mums and dads.

 

I've seen all of them and I can tell you some of those people are better than the doctors and dentists who get on boards.

 

It's about who and what you are and your willingness to want to help your school with honesty, integrity and passion.

 

Easy as that.

 

Awesome.

 

Now the other one was the interest one.

 

Yeah.

 

So this question is, how do school boards ensure that interests of ethnic communities are represented?

 

Yep.

 

So you might remember back a few slides, I made the point, the board's job is to act on behalf of all students.

 

So you may be, for instance, you might be a Pakeha like me, or you might be a Māori like me.

 

There aren't very many schools in Auckland or New Zealand now that don't have three, sometimes different cultures.

 

Irrespective of what nationality and ethnic or cultural group you are yourself, when you sit at the table, you are accountable for every student in your school.

 

So boards want to therefore make sure that all those interests are being met with voice at the table.

 

And you might do it the complicated way, in part by saying, what percentages of our students are from what countries?

 

Should we get them all on the board?

 

Now, the tricky part about this is that you might, let's take an example, you might have a community who are, Uyghur Chinese, who are refugees and have come to New Zealand and live here.

 

If they want to be on the board, they can be, but you cannot make the community vote for them.

 

The issue is how do you encourage your community to get people on the board?

 

Minorities struggle because the majority people will vote for the people they know.

 

That's just a little bit of democracy.

 

So schools need to be artful and thoughtful about how they promote in their messages to schools before an election.

 

We want to see

 

wide representation of our community bees on the board.

 

Please look at our candidates with care.

 

You still can't make them.

 

However, you do have an option.

 

If you cannot get people onto the board through the election process, you have the option with care to do what we call co-opt people onto the board.

 

Now, co-option, once you co-opt a person to the board,

 

They are a full member of the board, all the powers, all the obligations, all the responsibilities, but they are a co-option.

 

In other words, the board looks around and then says, we think we need a person from that community on our school board.

 

And would the board agree that we need this person on our board?

 

So the board has a discussion about

 

and it ends up saying, yep, we think it's a good idea.

 

So if I was the chair, I might say, I move the board co-opt, John Jones, to the board from this point in time to the end of the year, to the end of this election cycle.

 

So you nominate a person to be co-opted to the board without consulting the community.

 

That's the interesting bit.

 

You can talk to them, but a co-option is a decision by the members of the board present on the day, and you put them on there for three years.

 

Once you co-opt them, they are a member of the board.

 

The trick is, if you have parent elected board members,

 

You can probably really only logically co-opt people.

 

You must keep a majority of parent elected through the election system.

 

You must keep an elected majority at all times of elected parents.

 

So if you've got five parent elected members on the board, you can safely co-opt 

 

Starting to get to be a big board though, so you have to be careful.

 

There's nothing to stop you having something like councils.

 

So I can think of communities in Auckland where there are large chunks of Filipino and other ethnic communities.

 

And if they won't be co-opted onto the board or won't get elected onto the board, there's nothing to stop the board devising a mechanism by which they set up

 

a community council that can meet with the board from time to time and express its anxieties and expectations and things, and the board can uplift those and take them back to the board where the legal processes follow.

 

So, those are slightly different ways of having to do it, but there's nothing to stop the boards do that.

 

The law does not deny that, and therefore it's an option that's available to you.

 

So there's lots of ways you can do it.

 

There are lots of mechanisms.

 

Awesome.

 

Awad.

 

Thank you.

 

Thanks, Chris.

 

That's great.

 

Any more questions?

 

There's a question from.

 

How the community know that there is school board elections?

 

Yeah, this is something that Awad and I were talking about before.

 

So there will be a lot of stuff going on around the school.

 

So the school will be advertising widely in its community.

 

But the advertising at a broader level, I don't know what the current government's programme will be next year.

 

There are usually advertisements in local newspapers and national newspapers.

 

Whether there will be, and I would assume there'll be, by the way, quite a lot of digital social platforms that'll be used.

 

I think last time we were beginning to step into and play with

 

some of the other digital forms, Facebook and some of those social media platforms.

 

I would assume there'll be quite a lot of that done.

 

So that'll be out there and that will reach.

 

But whether there'll be anything done nationally, like something like television, I don't know.

 

It's too early and that'll be up for the government of the day and the ministry to decide probably sometime, term sometime next year, I guess, is when that'll come.

 

I don't know whether any of your team have heard anything about that Awad, but there is some community work, most of it's done by schools, and then there is a layer of social media and other work that goes out there.

 

It's a good question.

 

I mean, if I had my money, I'd be putting some on television because I think the role of the board is so important, but everything costs these days.

 

So it's just a matter of what can we sustain, really.

 

Awesome.

 

Any other questions from the audience, the team?

 

Does anyone have any question?

 

While people are thinking, I just have one quick question, Chris, about, you've talked about special meetings for board to deal with issues and so on.

 

What is the process of requesting a special meeting with the board?

 

Say, for example, I have a child.

 

My child has some issues with the school staff or the principal or something.

 

OK, cool.

 

As a parent, how can I interact with the world?

 

So this is quite a complicated question.

 

And so you will read, if you go and look at our website, there's a whole mountain of stuff.

 

Technically, part of what Awad asking them might relate to a concern or a complaint.

 

of some description about a lack of support or something they think is not going well with their child.

 

Would that be fair Awad?

 

Yeah, something like that.

 

I mean, it could be other things.

 

Yeah, there's a variety of issues.

 

What parents have got to understand, and it's still a game that parents learn, and I mean the standard parent community rather than parents on the board here.

 

Parents very regularly don't really understand the role of the board.

 

It is not the board's role to manage the day-to-day affairs for the principal of the school.

 

So if a parent, if you were, let's just say a good bargain, say you were down at countdown and a parent came up to you while you are putting all your bags through the checkout and said,

 

look, I've got a problem with that teacher in room 

 

Can you help me with that?

 

So my immediate answer is to say, look, thank you for your inquiry.

 

Have you discussed this matter with the teacher?

 

Have you raised your concern with the teacher?

 

And you walk them through just a polite, calm, friendly, help them if you can, but don't get it wrong question of,

 

Have you discussed with your teacher?

 

Maybe you should.

 

Would you like me to let the principal know or someone that you'd like to meet with them?

 

Can we ask for them to come and meet with you?

 

It's not the board's job to manage an operational matter about what's going on in the school unless the person raising the concern has been unable to get satisfaction from the school by talking to the teacher

 

talking to people in the office or talking to the principal.

 

And that's what I mean.

 

That's the business that I'm talking about of hours to hours.

 

So the board's job would not normally get involved in anything like that.

 

But, you know, three times this year in the schools that I manage personally as a governance supporter,

 

I've had schools where a parent has got frustrated for whatever reason with their school and their perception or their belief is the teacher or the principal or the office staff have not listened to them and they believe they've not been fairly treated.

 

At which point those boards get a letter from that parent and every school should have on its website a document called Concerns and Complaints, which documents

 

how parents address their concerns with the school.

 

So the board gets a letter from a parent, it looks at that document and says, has the parent discussed with the teacher?

 

Yes, they have.

 

they tried to get this resolved with the principal?

 

Yes, they have.

 

They're still not satisfied.

 

So their concern now becomes a complaint that the board needs to manage.

 

And then a process, a very carefully documented process is there

 

that a board follows.

 

Most of the time when that happens, the presiding member of the board pick up the phone and says, Chris, I need some help, please.

 

And we will help that school all around New Zealand.

 

There are or of me.

 

We will help a school understand what its process is for managing that and try and help the board to resolve the issue.

 

And it's one of the more interesting parts of our work because

 

Although we are the employer of the principal and it's our job to be a good employer and look after them, it is also our job, while being a good employer, to look after and ensure that parents are getting well cared for and getting what they deserve rightly and fairly from the school, natural justice and all that stuff.

 

And so when a complaint comes in about the principal, which the board has to handle,

 

The board's got to step through a very careful process that attempts to be a good employer and make sure the principal is safe, but answering the questions of what's gone wrong here, while it investigates the event and what happened, and whether the schools acted in the interests and have been supportive of the parent as it should.

 

And it might be that the board will end up saying, it looks like our policies and procedures were not followed here.

 

at which point the board's going to look to, redress the situation, make sure the child gets what they should be getting, and is also making sure that principal and staff are reviewing and correcting the things that an investigation has shown have not worked to the standard the board would set, because those standards are the policies, and I talked about them, they're the policies that reflect the expectations the community has

 

of the school for their children.

 

Enough.

 

I can talk for hours on that one.

 

No, that's very good, Chris.

 

Thank you very much.

 

Good.

 

There is a question here from the brass.

 

Yes, you're going to get that.

 

Yes.

 

Could we share the recording?

 

Yes.

 

This will be shared with you tomorrow morning, hopefully, and then you're free to share it with the community.

 

is there any particular people wanting?

 

OK, this is a good question.

 

Yeah, so that's a good question.

 

So, look, the comment to repeat, I've got to be very generalised here because I don't know whether you're a big school or a small school.

 

We've done the very democratic thing of saying every school in New Zealand will have a board.

 

I know of a little tiny school in the far north that has students.

 

and it's had students for the last years.

 

That means there are -odd parents in that community who have had to cycle through that whole community on the board over the last years.

 

They have to repeat, because unless new parents come in, the same parents get ground through the ring, and that's hard to fill a board in a school like that.

 

If it's kids and you can't get it, might be that you're in a community that's got lots of different diverse communities and they're really hard to reach.

 

Are you in Auckland?

 

Yeah, your name?

 

Yes, OK.

 

By all means, pass on my contact details later on.

 

Quite happy about that.

 

I'm happy to ring and have a talk to you.

 

Happy for you to ring the number that you will find on our website.

 

Generally, my experience is that if you can't get elected parents in a student community, which means you've got about or parents, then there is something else at play.

 

And that's likely to be that the board is somehow not

 

well-known, well-identified, or the right methods are not being used to reach out into the community.

 

You can do things like say to the principal, we want to write a paragraph or two in the school newsletter seeking parents.

 

I'm an intermediate school.

 

They're notoriously difficult to get board members for.

 

I've reached out to the principal over the years two or three times and said,

 

Can you call the senior staff together?

 

I'd like to come and meet with them one day after school.

 

And I have a minute discussion with her that says, you know, if you think through all the parents that come in and drop the kids at school and so on, do you think you could each identify one or two parents?

 

Do you think, you know, they would be a good parent to be on the board?

 

Can you please give that person's name to the principal?

 

And principal, could you reach out to those parents for the phone call and ask them,

 

Would they be interested in the discussion with the presiding member?

 

Because they would like to see if you would like to be a member of the board.

 

So you can do lots of direct reach out stuff.

 

That's not a difficulty at all.

 

But if you're finding it hard to get enough members in a community that size, then there is something not quite right in the connection.

 

And I would suggest you start by having a discussion.

 

It's confidential, remember, with the number.

 

and they will tell you on the governance line things you can try.

 

And if they thought that they couldn't help you in the course of a conversation or two, then they would log that information confidentially and I would get a message and I would reach out or one of my team would reach out and we'd ring out and talk to you and say, how can we help?

 

Awesome.

 

Thanks, Chris.

 

Pleasure.

 

That's helpful.

 

Any other questions?

 

Last call for questions.

 

I think you did a great job, Chris.

 

No more questions coming through.

 

I hope you enjoyed it, people.

 

Thank you for giving us your time and thank you so much for all you do on school boards.

 

I think that's, you know, I think people that get onto boards just reflect the sort of culture we have in New Zealand.

 

So

 

Thank you so much for coming on tonight.

 

I hope if you're not already on a board that you will reach out.

 

If you're on a board, I hope you'll stick with it and continue to give to the community the way you are.

 

I'm humbled to be able to talk and work with you.

 

Thank you.

 

Awesome.

 

As we said, we're going to share the recording and the presentation with you tomorrow, and so you'll be free to share that with your community and family and friends.

 

So I will pass that to you.

 

Everyone who attended will get a copy.

 

Thank you, Chris.

 

We really appreciate your time.

 

Thanks for choosing to spend your evening with us and sharing your knowledge and experience.

 

And I'm sure everyone found it useful as I did.

 

Yeah, we really appreciate your time.

 

My privilege.

 

And as I say, thank you.

 

I just I honour the fact that you give your time like this.

 

So it's my honour to serve people.

 

Thank you very much indeed.

 

Have a good night.

 

Thank you, Chris.

 

Before we go, I just wanted to, Cinthia, if you're ready, if you can post a quick poll.

 

So now we just want to find out how much you know after hearing this presentation, how much do you think you know about the board now?

 

That would be helpful.

 

There you go, Chris.

 

A lot more.

 

A lot more, Chris, so that's great.

 

Thank you for everyone who participated in the poll and for just participating in the session in general and asking questions.

 

We appreciate your time.

 

And just one last thing before you go, if you could please fill out this feedback survey, it would be useful for us and for Chris as well.

 

You can do so by scanning the QR code or there's a link

 

which I will post in a minute.

 

There's a link in the chat section.

 

Here you go.

 

You can use the link or just scan the QR code.

 

Please do so and that would be very helpful for us.

 

Thank you again for all of you for spending the evening with us and participating and we hope we enjoyed it and you found it really useful.

 

Thanks again, Chris.

 

We appreciate your time.

We value it very much.

 

And as we started with a karakia here, we're going to be finished with a Karakia here as well.

 

Kia whakairia te tapu Kia wātea ai te ara Kia turuki whakataha ai Kia turuki whakataha ai Haumi e.

 

Until next time, we wish you a good night and ka kite ano

 

Good night, everyone.