We would like to thank the respondents who participated in the second Principal’s Email Group of 2019. There were 3 questions, and a number of trends arising from the responses;
Our school vision statement is (To deliver) ‘Education with a heart’. We would like your feedback about this current vision statement. What are your feelings about it?
-It works well and suits the age/stage of primary students, simple message that considers a holistic approach to education.
-Excellent statement with a heart
-Education with a heart to me means delivering education in a well structured supportive way. A way in which you would like your child to be nurtured, treated with respect and given opportunities to step out of ones comfort zone with support where necessary. Building both an understanding of what is right and wrong but with a path to develop an opinionated voice.
-It’s a nice sentiment. But its not very specific-rather vague. The values are so thoroughly taught throughout the school, maybe the vision could refer to these?
-I really like it. Nice and simple, and love the “heart”.
-I think is very good! I believe love is the answer for any person and the “heart” makes you think in love. Which everyone is seeking for life and family.
-Our students are likely to be a white-collar (elite class).not “work n income” or blue-collar. Although “education with a heart” shows teachers care about students, but doesn’t shows what result we want to achieve. Our vision should have words like” excellent, top, high.elite.. etc.” “Together we are on summit” could be a good idea. It shows teacher work hard to help student to be on top of world. “summit” shows the teaching result. “Together” shows teacher along with student
-I think that this vision truly expresses the need of the times. I have always appreciated how PMPS develops values in the students. In a world which is increasingly becoming divided, empathy and love is truly what is needed.
-Good
-Education with a heart is probably the most valuable offer in education we parents, can give to our children. I believe that education is not about delivering knowledge and not only about academic achievement. I believe that modelling through example and providing our children ( and thus our future) with skills and values that can guide them into being good persons and good citizens, is very special. I also think that the school, the families/ whanau and the community are bonded together in this walk with our children. Each play an important role in the process of raising a good citizen. I feel education with a heart when the principal greets us every morning in our mother language; when the main goal of one of my son’s teacher was that he could be and felt happy at school…and, when asked if my children are happy at school, I feel blessed to be able to reply: YES, thank you, my children are very happy at school. Small things that can have a HUGE impact not only in the academic and learning success but also in their personalities and behaviour, and model them into a good path of citizenship. That, for me, is educating with heart!
A good vision statement is measurable. What measures do you think we could be using to assess our effectiveness of ‘Education with a heart’?
-Students that display pride in their school, that love to learn and look forward to going to school each day, students that know that school is ‘their place’ and they feel a sense of safety and belonging.
-Evidence-based Achievement of our School values
-To start with I would ask the students do they know what the school vision statement is and what does ‘Education with a heart’ mean to them and do they feel that the school is delivering this to them. Then with the results I would ask what does the ‘schools’ vision of this statement mean and how does the school reflect this in it’s teaching, learning, leadership, communication and in the community.
-I don’t think you can measure heart. But my child’s teacher puts her heart into her job. If the vision were related to the values then it would be easy to see how the students are progressing with responsibility etc. they could talk about how they are developing resilience and working towards excellence.
-Education achievement levels, number of extra curricular activities provided; student and staff happiness levels, contribution to the community (student participation rates in community events etc)
-Can we measure love? 🙂 I think measure the children satisfaction, qty of complains, qty of good feedback, teachers approach, things like that maybe…
-Academic achievement is no longer the only measurement for high quality education in china now. They already change to: 1. Academic excellent. Still No 1 index. We still need to focus this. Academic is Pigeon Mountain’s Brand Name. 2. Some other skills: second language, music, painting, sport, … etc. I still thinking “111” school concept for measurement of school vision “Together we are on summit”.
-The best measure would be the behavior of the students. To see if they have developed the values that the vision is trying to achieve. But I also think it should also include attitude and behavior teachers and other support staff as they too are part of the school. How well the children cope in a different or difficult situation eg. School lock down. And their interactions with each other out of class eg. During lunch time or breaks.
-The relationship between the teachers and the students.
-I think the PB4L programme implemented by the school could be a good indicator of achievement. ( some parameters could be “measured”, maybe?!?). It’s hard to measure non academic achievements, and education with a heart goes way beyond academic achievement and success. The school already does some consulting or surveys on the parents and students and including some wellbeing questions could be other way of quantifying the unquantifiable!
To what extent do you think (To deliver) ‘Education with a heart’ is present in the day-to-day life and interactions of everyone at our school?
-The average response to this question was 8.2 where the maximum potential score was 10.