Marist Catholic School has a warm welcoming atmosphere, high academic excellence, Catholic values and an inclusive community.
Students are known individually by their teachers and good communication between home and school is a strong priority.
The school is a state-integrated primary school (Year 0-6). The students receive an excellent education involving Catholic values being integrated into every aspect of school life. Part of being Catholic is about community and belonging. Catholic education is a way of building this understanding through teachings of diversity, culture and identity. 2020 as we all know was a year that no-one wishes to repeat and brought many challenges to all of society.
Education was one of these challenges and Marist Catholic School embraced these challenges ensuring that the interruptions to the students' learning would be minimal.
A major focus for the school at the beginning of 2020 was to ensure the parents had a better understanding of what their children were learning and experiencing at school during a school day. In January 2020 the school introduced a resource that had both classes and students blogging about what they were learning through photos, videos and uploading work which parents could see and also comment on. This resource proved to be an essential component of the remote learning that would begin in March that year.
With a highly dedicated staff the school was able to quickly move into remote learning where the students and their parents could continue the learning from home. The remote learning consisted of differentiated group work as well as group learning through zoom sessions and sessions where parents could get online with teachers if they had questions or needed support. Throughout the lockdowns feedback from parents and students was gathered and tweaks to the programmes were made to constantly improve the procedures so that the students' learning and wellbeing was nurtured.
Historically, in a normal year at Marist Catholic School students achievement is very high with the achievement percentage levels across the school in Reading, Writing and Maths being in the high 90’s. 2020 understandably saw a very small drop of around 8% across the school, which in comparison to Auckland schools was low and nationally extremely low.
Feedback from Marist Catholic School parents was that they were extremely appreciative of all the teachers efforts and thought the teachers had worked above and beyond as they also were dealing with their own whānau’s and wellbeing. The students found it helpful to have the ability to work both on and off line, with the school constantly reinforcing the message that everyone's home situation is different as parents navigated their work situation. Whānau were reminded to do whatever worked for them with the remote learning that had been shared.
As Suzanne a local parent told us, “The remote learning plan is a good balance of quality learning activities and connection opportunties for the children. The parents are also given lots of support from the teachers to help guide them via our on-line APP, easy to follow weekly timetable and individualised teacher feedback messages on their child’s progress.
“This has meant the kids stay engaged, connected and can continue with their key learning tasks and the parents can monitor their child's progress. We can see a lot of planning and effort has gone into the programme by the dedicated staff.”
If you are thinking about sending your child to Marist Catholic School there are two forms of enrolment.
● Preference
• ○ 5.1 - The child has been baptised or is being prepared for baptism in the Catholic Church.
• ○ 5.2 - The child’s parents/guardians have already allowed one or more of its siblings to be
baptised in the Catholic faith.
• ○ 5.3 - At least one parent/guardian is a Catholic, although their child has not yet been baptised,
• ○ 5.4 - With the agreement of the child’s parent/guardian, a significant familial adult such as a
grandparent, aunt or uncle who is actively involved in the child’s upbringing undertakes to
support the child’s formation in the faith and practices of the Catholic Church
• ○ 5.5 - One or both of a child’s non-Catholic parents/guardians is preparing to become a Catholic.
● Non-Preference - Non Catholic. The school can have 5% as non preference enrolments.
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Published 3 September 2021