Hornsby Trust

2015 ANNUAL REPORT

We are pleased to present the second annual report of the Hornsby Pacific Education Trust. The Trust was set up in February of 2014 to take over the leadership of the volunteer project at St Andrew’s High School, Nuku’alofa, which has been running since 2010.

2015 was a significant year for the Trust. The most exciting aspect of the year was to observe the progress made by the St Andrew’s leadership team in changing the culture of the school. This was most clearly demonstrated by the improvement in staff accountability and standards of teaching, and in the initiatives taken by leadership and staff to improve school systems.

It was a quieter year in terms of practical tasks completed by volunteers. As organisers, we felt that a smaller number of volunteers were needed to do specialised jobs, and this would also lighten the organisational burden on us. The list of maintenance jobs to be done is still extensive, and still requires volunteers and funding, but major projects such as repainting the school, refurbishment of classrooms and flood drainage are now in the past.

Support for present and former students has continued, and we have been delighted to see the practical results of some of this support. More of that later.  We continue to be grateful to the many individuals and organisations which have supported the Trust’s work practically and financially.

Support for present students

·         In 2015, individual donors in New Zealand and the United Kingdom supported 16 students at St Andrew’s through the Hornsby Trust with fees scholarships. The scholarships enable students from needy families to stay at school when they might otherwise have to leave.  Other students are supported (not through the Trust) by local donors and organisations within Tonga, but these are all based on academic excellence.

Support for past students

 ·         One former student was supported by the Trust to undertake further study and training in catering and hospitality at ‘Ahopanilolo, the Catholic tertiary institute in Nuku’alofa. She has passed her first year with very good grades, and will return for a second year.

 ·         As part of the close and valuable relationship building between King’s College, Auckland, and St Andrew’s, Tonga, a student was offered a full boarding scholarship at King’s College. The Trust provided funding for his air travel to and from Auckland, and for ‘extras’ such as textbooks, stationery and clothing. He has been a very good ambassador for St Andrew’s, but academically the task of moving from Year 11 in Tonga to Year 12 in New Zealand has proved to be challenging for him. We await his exam results with interest. In future it may be wiser to have students transferring to the NZ system repeat the year they have just taken in Tonga.

 ·         Ex-student Kaveinga Vaka, whom the Trust supported in a year’s study in NZ in 2014, returned to St Andrew’s in 2015 and took up leadership of the school’s music. This has succeeded in spectacular fashion. The school’s brass band entered the inter-school competition for the first time ever, came second in their grade and won the cup for the best hymn playing. School singing is flourishing, and we await results from the school’s examination music candidates.

 Professional development for teachers

·         Dr Kay Hawk has continued to visit the school regularly from Auckland to provide professional development for teachers and the school’s leadership team. Dr Hawk works voluntarily for St Andrew’s, and the Trust pays her travel expenses. The results of this work have again been quietly spectacular. The Principal, Mr Maka, has gathered around him a strong team and has been able to delegate administrative tasks successfully. Several academic and systems initiatives have been taken by the leadership, and have already begun to result in improvements in school culture and efficiency.

 ·         Timetabling is more efficient, staff and students take more care of school property, internal assessment is handled more effectively, and staff absenteeism has been reduced. St Andrew’s has been one of the first schools to take up new methods of assessment prescribed by the Tongan Ministry of Education.

 ·         The quality of teachers continues to grow, as the Principal builds a core of new young teachers to work with more experienced staff. From 2016 the Trust will begin to provide funding for teacher refresher leave, enabling teachers to spend some weeks at appropriate schools in NZ to gain ideas and widen horizons. The school chaplain, Sr. Fehoko CSN spent a month in NZ doing just this in 2015, and found it very valuable. We are grateful to Rev Maurice Dagger and others who made this trip possible.

 School finances

 One of the major improvements in the school this year has been in finance. This is mainly as a result of more efficient collection of fees. After suggestions from the Trust, a new system for collecting outstanding fees was devised by the Principal, and applied to good effect. We feel there is still room for improvement, but this year has shown what a difference can be made.

 It still needs to be said that the financial position is precarious, and the school operates on an annual budget of less than $NZ300,000, for over 400 students.

 Volunteers in 2015

 In 2015 by design only four volunteers (apart from ourselves) came from NZ to work at St Andrew’s. Two electricians, Robert Gilmour and John Hewitson, returned to carry on their work of upgrading the school’s electrical system. Eddy and Sarah van Leeuwen returned for their third visit and made a great contribution – Eddy overhauling the school truck and doing other engineering jobs, and Sarah cooking for the volunteers and taking religious education classes in Sr Fehoko’s absence. The smaller number of volunteers made our job as organisers much less stressful, while keeping the maintenance work moving forward.

 Others who volunteered included two palangi residents of Nuku’alofa who came in to take English reading classes for students who were assessed as being behind in this area.

 King’s College visit

 The school was visited again in 2015 by a group of students and chaplains from King’s College, Auckland. This was the third visit by a group from King’s. We are very encouraged and touched by their ongoing support for St Andrew’s. This year they took over the arrangements for shipping the container, filling it with resources for the school which they had collected. Many of these resources were paid for by St Andrew’s, Epsom, and also by our other donors.

 The visit by the party from King’s was a great success and a little different this year in that they were involved in the Coronation festivities – definitely a unique experience for them – and were billeted for part of their stay by St Andrew’s student families. Billeting was very successful and will be repeated next year.

 Projects completed in 2015

 The following work was done by Hornsby Trust volunteers in 2015:

·         Connection of power to the new music room (previously sports room)

·         Renewal of lights and powerpoints in music room

·         Conversion of health room to music office and storage

·         Fitting out of existing store with shelves for band instruments

·         Renewal of power supply to second computer room

·         Rewiring air conditioner in server room

·         Rewiring of power supplies to school kitchen and other classrooms in same block

·         Overhaul of school truck – renewing setting, radiator, brakes etc

·         Installation of filter to water supply for school flat

·         Mending four classroom doors which were rotten

·         Fitting 12 second-hand folding tables with new plywood tops, varnishing, for use at functions in school hall

·         Building of large scaffolding tower for use in repainting of 2-storey main block

·         Repainting main school block, and fitting wire netting to eaves to keep pigeons out of roof space

·         Fixing lights in school hall using scaffolding tower

·         Removing truckloads of rubbish from school site

·         Sorting and tidying library, purging unsuitable books

·         Unpacking and sorting 65 cartons of donated goods from King’s College, delivering to teachers, library, office etc

·         Assessing junior students for English reading. Organising and running remedial classes for those who needed them

·         Mending water pump for use at school farm. Mending water collection gutters at piggery

·         Observing every teacher in class; writing a report for the Principal identifying strengths and weaknesses of each teacher

·         Facilitating the replacement of three server disks in the school computer system (disks and expertise donated by Aiscorp NZ Ltd)

Thanks

 The Hornsby Trust would like to thank the following for their contributions to the work at St Andrew’s in 2015:

 Aiscorp, Wellington

 St Andrew’s Anglican Church, Epsom

 King’s College, Auckland

 Our many individual donors, churches and other organisations

 Future plans

 The following plans have been fully discussed and agreed  with the Principal:

·         2016 will see three NZ groups visit St Andrew’s. In April a group from St Andrew’s Church, Epsom will make their second visit. They will have one task – to run an “English Week” for the school. This is an annual event, and features speeches, plays, debates, and other activities featuring the use of English language. It promises to be entertaining as well as very worthwhile.

·         In July we will welcome King’s College for their fourth visit, and as usual this will comprise a mixture of practical work, academic help for St Andrew’s students, and mixing and mingling through sport and other activities. King’s students will again be billeted with Tongan families for part of their stay; this was one of the most valuable aspects of the 2015 visit.

·         In September a performing arts group from Onslow College in Wellington will visit St Andrew’s and other schools in Nuku’alofa. Onslow was the school that hosted Kaveinga Vaka as an intern for2014, and gave him an unforgettable year’s experience. We welcome their desire to make a ‘return visit’. They will bring their school’s musicians, artists, dancers and actors, and they hope to stimulate activity in all these areas in St Andrew’s and other schools in the area.

·         Dr Hawk’s visits will continue, and we hope to have another NZ educationist visit the school in April and May to provide professional development and coaching for teachers. Tongan secondary teachers are faced with a number of major changes in curriculum and assessment this year and next, and help from NZ is very valuable.

·         The programme of maintenance will continue with specialist volunteers from NZ. Equipment for teaching, music, sport and other co-curricular activities needs upgrading, and the Trust will do what it can to provide this equipment. A list of maintenance jobs and equipment needed is attached separately.

·         Short professional development leave for teachers will be introduced, and the Trust hopes to be able to both help organise the NZ end of this and fund teachers’ travel and other expenses.

Hornsby Trust accounts

 The Trust’s annual accounts for 2015 are given below. A feature to be noted is that income was well down on 2014. This is because two of the organisations which have given us funding in the past did not do so in 2015. One further group had changed their criteria and was not applied to. We hope that these and other organisations will ‘come on board’ for 2016.

 The Hornsby Trust has been granted Donee Status by the NZ Inland Revenue Department, which means that all donations are eligible for tax rebates. This will come into effect for all donations made after 1 April 2016. For charities operating outside NZ this is a long and thorough process needing Cabinet approval, and we are fortunate to have been successful. We hope that this will stimulate individual donations for our work.

In spite of the progress made in deferred maintenance and infrastructure, St Andrew’s still needs normal regular maintenance plus a great deal of new equipment to allow it to offer a good standard of education to the Tongan children who need it. We hope our donors and supporters will help us achieve this.

Simon and Rachel Tipping

Founding Trustees