A Story of Change - Rawhiti School

Rāwhiti is a primary school situated in the culturally diverse suburb of New Brighton (currently 32% Māori and 7% Pacific), with students drawn from a number of surrounding suburbs. 

The leadership and faculty are highly motivated, with an enthusiasm to collaborate. The sense of community is further strengthened by the stunning natural environment, neighbouringthe ocean and surrounded by native bush.

Along with their willingness to serve their community comes an enthusiasm to collaborate.

With three New Brighton schools merging as one new campus following the Canterbury earthquakes, the staff and students of Rāwhiti School are certainly familiar with challenges.

In partnership with the school, our team determined that the wellbeing of Rāwhiti students could be enhanced, elevating the value of health and physical education and the hauora curriculum.​​​​​​​

“We have a cohesive across school plan and teachers are now much more certain of what they have to do, to teach PE themselves.”

Liz Weir, Principal

Given the importance of physical activity to students’ wellbeing, Sport Canterbury’s Healthy Active Learning team made a commitment to support the schoolto enhance students’ physical literacy.

We set out to improve teacher confidence and capability as we know this is the cornerstone of quality experiences for our tamariki.

We started with a scoping session to understand what the school was already doing with Health, PE and sport.

From this point we worked together with lead teachers to develop clear, practical plans that promote quality play, sport and physical activity experiences.

Forming a “Champions Team” amongst the Rāwhiti teachers was key and a powerful internal influence. We worked closely with this group to provide support and professional development. The “Champions Team” included one teacher from each studio who was responsible for taking the learnings back to the rest of the staff in the group, and implementing positive changes within the Health and Physical Education curriculum.

Teachers themselves have identified that confidence and knowledge has improved because of this support.

We encouraged Rāwhiti to consider the way they utilised external providers in the school to ensure they deliver outside of curriculum time. This means tamariki are receiving quality Health and Physical Education lessons delivered by teachers, and have access to additional extracurricular physical activity opportunities.

During lockdown, we looked at teacher wellbeing, and supported the school with tools such as “Mindful Mover,” to make sure that this was top of mind. We also supported Courtney Ruske (Healthy Active Learning lead teacher) by providing a kete of resources to assistwith on-line learning, which she was able to share with the other staff at Rāwhiti. 

By facilitating professional development hui’s, which all Healthy Active Learning schools attended, Sport Canterbury provided accessto mentoring and networking opportunities.

Most importantly, we considered how the support from Sport Canterbury had to be relevant to the needs of Rāwhiti School Resources, PLD and plans needed to be tailored in a way that took into consideration the unique environment of Rāwhiti School.