Curriculum

New Zealand Curriculum

New Zealand has a national curriculum that guides what your child learns at school. Your child will develop a range of values and key competencies, or capabilities, that they need to succeed in life. These are all woven into the teaching of learning areas, or subjects.  The National Curriculum is the term used to refer to The New Zealand Curriculum and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa. These set the direction for student learning and guide schools and kura as they design and implement a curriculum that meets the needs of their students. Focus is largely on reading, writing and mathematics in the primary years, as these are really important foundation skills that everyone needs in order to be able to do well in life. Children need strong reading, writing and mathematics skills to progress through the levels of the National Curriculum and be able to achieve NCEA Level 2 or above at secondary school.

Cultural Practices

At South Makirikiri School we pride ourselves in who we are as individuals. We recognise and celebrate the multi-cultural diversity of our nation, community and school. We foster and value a strong partnership between home and school and especially between school, whanau and iwi.

Important aspects of our cultural practices are as follows.

• Pronunciation, akonga names, places and iwi.
• We ensure our akonga are achieving success by promoting language, identity and culture as well as the cultural competencies of tātaiako.

Long term as well as short term planning reflects this.

• We value cultural diversity and celebrate who we are.
• We foster and build partnerships with the local iwi and the community; this is continually strengthened through what we do and their
• interactions with us.
• That all of us foster a ‘have a go’ attitude in recognising the importance of who we are and what each person stands for.

These five key elements form the cornerstone of who we are and what we stand for in recognising the cultural and social diversity and its importance for us at South Makirikiri School.

Below: Artwork by South Mākirikiri School students.