SCHOOL NEWSLETTER:

Kia ora koutou, Namaste, Talofa Lava, Konnichiwa, Ni hao, Kia orana, Malo e lelei, Chao, Hallo, Zdravstvuite, Fakaalofa lahi atu, Salam, Suostei, Hola, Annoyong Haseyo, Caio, Nei ho, Suoday, Ni sa Bula, Kamusta, Xin chào, Gutentag, Bonjour, Greetings

I hope everyone is enjoying our sunny weather. Let’s hope it continues for our beach trip this Friday! It is great to see our students enjoying swimming with their classes throughout the day and having an extra swim in break times some days too. Thank you to Mr Salmon for always keeping our pool so sparkling clean. Mr Salmon has actually acquired many certificates and passed many pool inspections with flying colours over the years for his awesome mahi.

As we near the end of the school year, it is always important to reflect upon our goals. I am very proud of our staff and tamariki for all of the effort they have put into their learning and for all of the progress they have made throughout the year. Our strategic goals this year were focussed around literacy, assessment and developing a mana ōrite Māori development plan. We have made great gains towards achieving our goals both as individuals and as a collective team which is very pleasing to see. This year we also introduced the Hikairo Schema as a framework to deepen our understanding and awareness of culturally responsive and sustaining practices in our kura, and I would like to acknowledge Aimee Marinkovich for her leadership role with this kaupapa.

Next year, to align with the Ministry of Education mandates and focus areas, our school’s strategic goals will be centred around structured literacy, structured maths and attendance. One of my own professional goals is to research further into the correlation between wellbeing, culture and education and I am looking forward to doing lots of learning in this area too.

Kia pai tō wiki

Mauri Ora Whānau

Sharon

Attributed to Dr Ankush Mittal – Medical Officer of Health

National Public Health Service | Northern Region | Te Tai Tokerau

We are seeing more cases of whooping cough this year in Te Tai Tokerau compared to last year, similar to trends across the country. Whooping cough symptoms can range in severity based on a person’s immune and health status, but the disease tends to be more severe for infants under 1 year of age. Whooping cough is a contagious disease that is well established in New Zealand and around the world, and not a disease we can eliminate by isolating cases and contacts. The primary strategy for reducing the harm from whooping cough is up to date immunisation in our communities.

If a case of whooping cough is infectious at school

The school will be contacted by the local public health service if it is believed a case of whooping cough has attended school while infectious. The public health service will support the school and the case (and their whānau) side by side, ensuring that anyone with whooping cough is receiving the right support in the community to manage their illness, and is getting clear advice on when they are able to return to school. With the right treatment, cases of whooping cough may be back to their educational facility after only 2 days of isolation, although this will be directed by the public health service – cases do not require any clearance tests.

Contacts of whooping cough are not isolated unless they have had particularly close contact with the case and are also symptomatic, and so a single case of whooping cough should not present a significant disruption to attendance at school.

Where it is believed someone who is particularly vulnerable to whooping cough has had a significant exposure at school, they will be contacted directly as part of the contact investigation. Of those educational settings affected so far, almost all have only had a single case, and there are no known educational setting based outbreaks of whooping cough in Te Tai Tokerau currently. Not all cases of whooping cough in the community are diagnosed, and therefore it is important to consider that there is always some risk of whooping cough in any setting, and that approaches to maintaining a clean environment, practicing good cough and hand hygiene, and promoting immunisation are valuable for all settings.

Contacting us

If you would like to discuss anything with us, you can call 09 430 4100 (ask for the public health service), or email Communicable.DiseaseTeam@northlanddhb.org.nz

More information:

More about whooping cough https://info.health.nz/conditions-treatments/infectious-diseases/whooping-cough

Vaccination near me: https://www.healthpoint.co.nz/immunisation/northland/