Cashmere Learning Community Cluster

This learning community cluster includes 5 state primary schools, 1 state intermediate school, 1 state secondary school, 1 state integrated primary school and 17 early childhood education providers.

[iframe][/iframe]

Schooling

Early Childhood Education (ECE)

There are 640 licence spaces across the early childhood providers in this cluster, including 118 spaces for children under two years of age. At July 2011, 959 children were enrolled at early childhood services in this cluster, 100 were children under two. All but one of the 29 new entrant students who enrolled at a school in the Cashmere Cluster in the year to March 2012 had attended an ECE service. All but one of the 43 Māori new entrant students and all but one of the 15 Pasifika new entrants had attended an ECE service.

Services

ECE services are independently owned and managed.

School Governance

There are three types of schools: state, private (or registered or independent) and state integrated schools. (State integrated schools are former private schools which, while now “integrated” into the state system, also provide programmes around their particular religious or learning philosophy.) State and state integrated schools, while government funded, are managed by boards of trustees. Private schools receive only partial funding from the Government. Day to day management of ALL schools is the responsibility of the Principal. The Crown is responsible for property provision for state schools to ensure students have access to their closest school. The proprietors of state integrated and private schools are responsible for their own buildings. The Cashmere cluster includes one state integrated school.

School boards are required to develop individual charters and annual plans and report their performance against these.You will be able to access the school charter from your school or at Find a school.

Education Review Office (ERO) reports on school and early childhood performance are publicly available.

Cashmere cluster ERO review cycle

Addington School	In progress
Somerfield School	3 years
Thorrington School	In progress
West Spreydon School	3 years
Cashmere Primary School	4-5 years
Christchurch South Intermediate	3 years
Cashmere High School	3 years
Sacred Heart School (Christchurch)	3 years

School roll Changes

In March 2010, prior to the earthquakes, the primary schools in this cluster provided teaching and learning to 2375 students. While individual rolls have fluctuated, the combined primary roll in this cluster has declined by 62 to 2313 at March 2012.

Individual School March Rolls, 2008, 2010, and 2012:

Note: only roll data for primary schools in this cluster is displayed.

The following chart shows the ethnic composition of the combined cluster school rolls by percentage of total combined roll

Education Achievement

National Standards aim to lift achievement in literacy and numeracy (reading, writing, and mathematics) by being clear about what students should achieve and by when. Boards were required to report on learners’ achievement for 2011 in the 2012 Annual Report.

You will be able to access National Standards data for your school from the Find a school section of the Education Counts website as soon as this information is available.

Special Education

Special Education delivers specialist services and support to learners with special education needs across this cluster. This includes support to early childhood education, schools, teachers, parents, families and whānau. Conductive Education is provided for identified high needs learners at Addington School and at Cashmere High School.

Māori and Pasifika provision

Māori-medium education programmes involve students being taught either all or some curriculum subjects in the Māori language, either in immersion (Māori language only) or bilingual (Māori and English) programmes. There are no Māori or Pasifika bilingual units, or language programmes delivered by schools in this cluster.

English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) provision

ESOL provision for refugee and new migrant learners from non -english speaking backgrounds is provided to 93 primary and 12 secondary learners across the schools in this cluster.

Technology

Technology provision in this cluster is located at Christchurch South Intermediate

Land – State Schools Only

School sites sit outside the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) land classification process and will not be given any Technical Category foundation rankings, though the land in the surrounding residential area of this cluster has been classified TC2 and TC3. Geotechnical assessments on the state school sites in this cluster indicate land issues are unlikely to compromise continued education provision.

Further ministry commissioned assessments may be required at a later date, should any of these sites be further developed.

Buildings – State Schools Only

There are 105 teaching spaces included in the 13,229 square metres (of useable space) of teaching and learning and administration space across this cluster of schooling provision. The teaching, learning and administrative space is incorporated into 79 actual buildings. All of these buildings have suffered damage during the earthquakes. Repairs have yet to be made to the building stock. Condition assessments confirm over time earthquake strengthening will be required across 15 of these buildings within the cluster. There are weather tightness issues in a further 18 buildings.

Building Condition Information – State Schools Only

	Number of buildings	Number of buildings with EQ damage	Number of buildings with strengthening required	Number of buildings with weather tightness repairs required	Number of buildings with both strengthening and weather tightness repairs
Addington School	11	11	1	4	1
Cashmere Primary	15	15	3	2	0
Chch South Intermediate	25	25	5	3	0
Somerfield	16	16	2	2	3
Thorrington	12	12	1	4	1
West Spreydon	11	11	3	3	0

Cluster	90	90	15	18	5

Based on March 2012 rolls – a minimum of 94 teaching spaces will be required for ongoing teaching and learning in this cluster, as below.

School Rolls and Classroom Numbers – State Schools Only

	March 2010 Roll	Classroom (No.) current (July 2012)	March 2012 Roll	Estimated classrooms required at March 2012
Addington School	184	12	200	8
Cashmere Primary	466	18	448	19
Chch South Intermediate	535	24	503	24
Somerfield	422	20	414	17
Thorrington	441	19	427	18
West Spreydon	171	12	186	8

Cluster	2,219	105	2,178	94

The Way Forward

Extensive condition assessments and engineering investigations have confirmed all buildings in this cluster currently remain fit to occupy – unless already isolated. A number of the buildings across this cluster will, however, require remediation and strengthening over the longer-term. 8 are not considered cost effective to repair. This includes 23 teaching spaces.

Future Planning

The earthquakes provide an opportunity, as outlined in the Education Renewal Recovery Programme [PDF; 881kb], to consider options for revitalising the greater Christchurch education network that go beyond simply replacing what was there. Discussions with schools, communities and providers within this cluster will be key to informing decisions around the future shape of education for the Cashmere education community. Ways to enhance infrastructure and address existing property issues, improve education outcomes, and consider future governance will form part of these discussions.

Community Engagement

There will be conversations with boards of trustees to establish how schools in this cluster can not only restore services but also deliver improved outcomes for their education communities. In line with the support signalled in the Education Renewal Recovery Programme [PDF; 881kb], for improved collaboration, this will provide an opportunity to gain further suggestions around shared provision across schools and services within specific areas of interest and the wider community, as appropriate.

Check out the engagement schedule for further details.

Secondary Schools

Secondary, state integrated and independent schools located within these clusters will be involved in discussions around the future shape of provision within their education communities.

The Ministry has worked collaboratively with secondary schools on ideas for future secondary school education provision in greater Christchurch. In October 2013, the Minister of Education announced decisions for the secondary school network.