School donations

By: Lesley Murrihy | Posted Wednesday February 7, 2018

One of the Government’s election promises was to offer schools the opportunity to accept $150 per student from the Ministry rather than ask parents for donations. Towards the end of last year, the new government said that it would see if it could implement that policy in time for 2018. However, we have not heard anything since, so clearly the Ministry was unable to get the systems for implementation set up in time.

As a Board of Trustees, we have agreed to accept the $150.00 per student when it becomes policy, thus saving our families over $220 per child per year. However, in the meantime, for 2018, we are relying on receiving donations from parents. It is worth noting that these have remained at the same level since the school opened in 2012. We really appreciate the fact that upwards of 80% of our parents generally pay the donation (although it dropped a little last year) – thus providing $35,000 - $40,000 in revenue. People often ask what those funds are used for. The simple answer is - to run the school. The funding received from the government is significantly less than it takes to run the school. Hence, we rely on locally-raised funds, which include school donations, fundraising and trading income (by our business department). School donations also contribute to reduced teacher-student ratios, which we believe had quite an impact on student achievement progress and data in 2017.

Please go to the School Shop to pay your donations for 2018.

Thank you.

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