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Welcome to the Kaitaia Abundant Life School |
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Principal's Address
Thank you for visiting our website, I hope you find it a valuable resource to answer any questions you may have about our wonderful school. Our vision is “a dynamic Christian school which produces outstanding Godly young people who will have a lasting positive impact on our community, the country and the nations”. This is a lofty vision based on the great commission in Matthew 28 in the bible. The mission statement of the school is “to be a Christian School that partners with families to produce young people of academic and personal excellence in a safe environment”. For the sake of clarity, we define the term Christian in the following 3 points:
Kaitaia Abundant Life School (KALS) is a state integrated area school with a Christian special character. At the core of the school is the integration document between the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the proprietors which allows KALS to offer the national curriculum from Year 1-13 in its own buildings whilst being fully funded by the MOE. Attendance dues are charged by the proprietors to allow for payment of the mortgage and capital works on the site. The school is here to serve Christian parents in the community with a first rate education for their children and we take this mandate seriously. Devotional programmes occur in the morning and Christian themes permeate all aspects of what we teach. The school has a focus on families and on being a family. We work hard to facilitate links between the different year groups and between parents, teachers and students. The school enrols students from Christian families mainly and this is termed “preference enrolment” by the Ministry of Education. The school is also permitted to enrol 5% “non-preference” students ; these are ones who would not fall within the 3 categories above. ALS began its life as a small Christian primary school but, after over 20 years in the community, has now grown to be an established Primary, Middle and Secondary school (Years 1-13) offering mainstream education in a wide range of subjects. The school currently offers 20+ subjects to level 3 NCEA (Year 13) which includes core subjects such as English, Physical Education, Mathematics and the Sciences (Biology, Chemistry and Physics) as well as more specialist subjects such as Food technology, Art, Fashion technology, Music, Business Studies and Computing. In addition to this the school can access a wide range of different senior secondary courses such as Automotive mechanics, Carpentry, Hospitality, Maori performing arts and Barista through specialist funding and also can offer many other courses such as Te Reo Maori through its video conferencing facility. The school is proud of its strong cultural flavour and areas such as powhiri, poroporoake, haka, noho marae, Te Reo Maori, waiata etc are common in the general life of the school. The school’s motto is FAITH EXCELLENCE WHANAUNGATANGA Faith: As a Christian school our devotional focus is our number one priority. We seek to have our students discipled in the ways of the bible and so the first 20 minutes of every day is spent in our devotions programme where we teach the students from the bible and pray with them in form groups. The devotions programme follows a weekly theme which is taught in our full school assemblies every Monday morning. Examples of this theme have been: Loving God, What is a Christian?, God’s plan of salvation for you, Respecting other people, Serving others, Forgiveness etc. In addition to this, all classes are taught from a holistic Christian worldview and all KALS staff are practising Christians. Excellence: The school prides itself on our students learning and enjoying their education in a safe environment. We expect our students to give only their best efforts to their studies and hence have high personal and academic standards. To this end we focus on students being well behaved and disciplined, completing class and homework, wearing their uniform with pride, and respecting themselves, their peers, their teachers and their parents. High standards are expected, and sometimes have to be enforced. We also believe that discipline should be first of all loving but also fair, corrective and appropriate. We believe that when students are engaged in learning and are succeeding in things they see value in, school becomes a great deal of fun; we like to see our tamariki smiling. Whanaungatanga: This beautiful Maori word is usually translated “relationships” but is actually broader and deeper than this and includes relating to others closely as in a family. Our relationships are special to us and we endeavour to facilitate positive relationships between staff, students, parents and the wider community. As an area school (Year 1-13) we have a large age range and so the older students tend to naturally look after the younger ones; this is something we encourage strongly. Student leadership is also a focus for us and we have many student leadership groupings such as prefects at Year 13, House captains at Year 12, student council (Year 5-13), Faith in action team (Y1-13), Ministry team (Year 1-13) and Middle school student leaders. The school is well resourced by the Boards of Trustees and Proprietors. The school averages better than one computer per 2 students and has data projectors in all classrooms. The school’s computer network is first class and is networked to many local printers and 4 modern photocopiers (2 colour). The school has many ICT packages available including specialist features such as Adobe Photoshop and Clickview (full digital video resource available in all classrooms). The school has specialist facilities in a number of areas and individual departments are funded to allow a modern and excellent curriculum to be taught. As an integrated Christian school the Ministry of Education imposes on the school a maximum roll of 260 students, although we would like to see the Minister of education increase this. At present, we can enrol students at any year level and are happy to receive applications from parents for their children. Aroha nui Dr. Peter Ferrar - B.Sc. (Hons), Ph.D., Dip. Tchg.
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