KŌRERO FROM MEL
On Monday this week, the Minister of Education made a significant announcement about the future direction of our national qualification, NCEA. Consultation on the proposal has opened today and over the coming weeks schools and communities will have the opportunity to provide feedback and input on the final shape of this proposal.
The timeline for the proposal means that there will be no changes for students in Year 9 and above. Your feedback as parents of students undertaking NCEA will still be valuable, and we encourage you to consider the documents above.
The proposed timeline means that we will continue to deliver our teaching and learning programmes at Rototuna Junior High School as previously planned.
Under this proposal, students who are currently in Year 8 would be the first group to undertake the Foundational Award in Year 11 or new qualifications in Year 12 and 13.
At RJHS we already have a strong focus on preparing our students for functional, qualifications ready, literacy and numeracy by the end of Year 10. We will continue to offer the Common Assessment Activities (CAA exams) at least until 2027. Our results to date have been excellent, and even without the assessment, we are committed to delivering strong teaching and learning programmes in these essential skills.
We are well positioned to introduce the new curriculum areas into our programme of learning. The new Mathematics and English curricular are well underway, and we will be receiving Phases 1 - 4 of other curriculum areas in October this year. We have always had a flexible, dynamic and responsive approach to our curriculum, with the way our teachers design new modules each semester. This puts us in an excellent position to adapt to the new curriculum content and integrate it into our unit and lesson design.
As a team we will be thinking about what these changes, including the proposed new grading systems, will have on Years 7 - 10 education and how we can continue to best prepare our students for their senior years of schooling.
In the next couple of months we will be surveying you, as our parent community, in preparation for developing our next Strategic Plan (2026 - 2028). Your voice is important to us, especially in light of the changes detailed above, so please take a few minutes to complete the survey when it is sent out.
