School Voluntary Donation
Each year the Board of Trustees need to determine how much money it will need to run the school and sets a budget accordingly. Costs associated with running a school generally fall into four categories - staffing, curriculum resources, property and administration.
The school’s funding comes from a combination of operational grant (government funding), parent donation, international student fees and fundraising. The operational grant only covers the basic administration, teaching and property running costs of the school, not any of the additional resources and equipment that parents expect to be available for their children and which enable effective teaching and learning.
In addition, as a Decile 10 school, the government considers our students to be from the most well resourced communities so we receive the lowest operational grant per student than lower decile schools.
Our community has historically supported a focus on extending students, through extension classes and a school wide focus on performing arts. We therefore provide extension English in the upper middle and senior areas of the school, as well as additional arts programmes with specialist teachers for all classes. In addition, we have made a commitment to prove a high level of support to our special needs students and to try to keep our teacher/pupil ratio low.
All of these factors benefit all of our students at different times by reducing class sizes and enriching their learning opportunities. Without the voluntary donation, the Board would be forced to have to considerably review what we could offer.
The Board of Trustees believes that parents accept the need to make a contribution towards the cost and the significant majority of parents contribute a donation. It is also worthwhile remembering that the donation is tax deductible – claims need to be made through the Inland Revenue.
Parents will be sent information about the donation and payment options at the beginning of each year.
Please refer to the BOT documents here (BOT folder/ annual documents) for the current year's donation information. This amount will contribute to:
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extra teaching programmes, such as reading assistance, additional teacher (to lower teacher/pupil ratio) and second languages
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curriculum resources and equipment, such as library books, computer software, musical instruments and sports equipment.
We appreciate your support of your child’s education, through the donation. If you have any questions about the donation, please talk either to the Principal or directly to a member of the Board of Trustees.