Blair Dravitski

Yeah, it's massive.

And at different times, we've had more staff arriving than existing.

So we don't have a high staff turnover, but we just had a huge roll increase up to 300 kids per year for multiple years.

So it meant that...

finding teachers and then obviously making sure that those teachers were up to speed with what the culture looked like, what the professional development looked like, how we delivered curriculum.

And at times we didn't get it right.

I was just at repetition of messaging.

New families arriving and you think, oh, I'll put that communication out of the newsletter two weeks ago.

Well, actually, we've had 45 families arrive in the last two weeks, so we need to keep sending the same messages out and going slow and making sure that we've got really robust systems that are scalable for growth

has been the key to success and again very fortunate to have an amazing SLT senior leadership team as well as a really competent capable staff which has been vital in being able to scale that growth.

Yeah, so it's a post-earthquake build.

So Rolleston is built on shingles, so therefore we had huge farmlands that were turned into residential housing.

What was planned, our school was originally proposed of a master plan of 750 kids, but then when COVID hit, some of those residents

Residential lots that were supposed to be sort of bespoke 1,000 square houses became high-density housing.

Huge change in demographics.

So we've got 47 different countries represented and a tick over 50% ESOL learners in our school as well.

So those changes have been dramatic and drastic and adds to the flavour of our school and adds to the flavour of leadership, I guess, as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

And there has been some significant changes in the last 18 months on top of the pace of change and the growth in our own environment.

For us, again, we look internally.