This website is designed to give you an insight of what happens at Whakatane Intermediate, what we believe is important and how we go about providing a high quality education for the Year 7 and 8 students who attend this school.
The middle years of schooling are crucial in the lives of young or emerging adolescents. Apart from the first few years of life, there is no other period during which people change so much as between the ages of 10 -14.
There is a general research agreement that as a group, emerging adolescents have the broadest range of physical, social, emotional and intellectual development needs.
This has created a unique caring culture in our school.
Intermediate / Middle schools are becoming increasingly recognised as the best educational structure for meeting the needs of emerging adolescents and maintaining their engagement with education at this crucial stage in their lives.
Effective schools have effective teachers - teachers who display a wide range of skills and abilities to create a learning environment where all students feel comfortable and feel that they can succeed both academically and personally.
We have set out to attract high performing teachers who have high expectations of student achievement. We provide all of our teachers with numerous opportunities to develop a deeper understanding of what they will be teaching - especially in literacy and numeracy. Pastoral care provided by the classroom teacher is particularly important for our students. We also encourage and expect our staff to develop an expertise in understanding and supporting the emerging adolescent age group. All of our teachers give their own time freely to extra curriculum activities and this is undoubtedly the most significant factor in providing opportunities for our students to try new sports and interests. Our outstanding sporting accomplishments, cultural activities (music groups, production, kapa haka), academic teams and outdoor education programmes are only possible through teachers giving their own time.
Evidence both nationally and internationally shows that the most important factor affecting student achievement is the teacher. All evidence that has been generated in the school effectiveness research community shows that classrooms are far more important than schools in determining how children perform at school.
Positive Parent / Teacher communication is therefore vital to maximise student learning.
I offer my personal commitment to you that your child will have the opportunity to learn to the highest extent of his or her ability in a positive learning environment.
Welcome to Whakatane Intermediate.
Doug McLean
Principal
