Rose McInerney: Mastery school principal on the surge in demand for charter schools

Some of the nation's new charter schools claim they are being 'swamped' with applications before they have even opened.

Seven of the publicly funded, privately owned schools are scheduled to open their doors over the next two weeks - and they're seeing plenty of demand.

Mastery School principal Rose McInerney says her school has 60 primary-aged children enrolled, with a further 40 wait-listed.

"What we do with those children is - we have a longer school day as a starting point, we have two hours of maths and two hours of literacy. We are teaching with direct or explicit instruction, and that's quite a lot to go into."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Charter schools are coming day one year one of the
new proposal from Act, and our first charter schools say
they are being swamped with applications ahead of their opening.
Seven charter schools are scheduled to open their doors over
the next two weeks. So Mastery School is in christ Church.
It's one of them, and I have the principal with me.

(00:20):
That's Rose mcinanny and welcome to the program.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Rose, Sure, nice to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
How much interest have you had?

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Oh, we've had a lot of interest. We have held
information nights before we were approved. I think we had
about three hundred and feefaro and educators come to that,
and then we've had lots of expressions of interest and
many of those have gone from expression of interest through
to enrollment. So it's quite a process.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Can you give me numbers? How many year rolls?

Speaker 2 (00:46):
So yeah, sure, we've got sixty students enrolled for term
one and then we've got about thirty or forty through
to come to our school tours during term one with
the view of starting in term two or term three.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
How do they not make the cut?

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Oh, it's not really about not making the cut, it's
just around the timeliness, So you know, we found out November,
so our enrollment process is quite lengthy because of the
children that we're serving. We're serving children who are behind
in their learning with the goal of getting them up
to speed and then transitioning them back into mainstream once
they've been with us for a period of time. And

(01:24):
so we only had eight weeks to interview and then
do all the testing of these children, so that takes
it's about two and a half hours per child. So
we're really and we've been really clear with all the
parents who so far when we've cut it off at
sixty that we're so keen to have them come through
in turn one, and everyone's really happy with that.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
So what will happen to those weitlisted kids? Can you
expand the capacity?

Speaker 2 (01:48):
It's not about the building capacity, it's about what we've
been able to do as a team within sort of
six to eight weeks since we were notified we were approved.
So actually everyone's super happy with it all at their
schools and they'll continue at their school until they can
come through to us. They'll come to sessions with the
teachers in term one, they'll come to information nights and
learn more about the school. Yet we can only do

(02:11):
what we can do with humans within that time. So
everyone's pretty happy with what with where we're at.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
What's different about your school? What is the difference between
a mainstream school and mastery school?

Speaker 2 (02:23):
So mastery school is the children that are behind in
their learning and what we do with those children as
we have a longer school day as a starting point,
we have two hours of maths and two hours of literacy.
We are teaching with direct and explicit instruction, and it's
quite a lot to go into, but to talk a
wee bit about it, it is eighty five percent of

(02:43):
repeated content and fifteen percent new content introduced each day.
So the lessons are very predictable and safe for the children.
These children that are a little bit behind in their learning,
it might be because they have a diagnosis of dyslexia
or a dyscalculator and some other learning needs where they
actually need a lot more repetition and predictability, and we

(03:03):
grow that content knowledge with them over time. It's based
on the premise of attentional control, so they're doing a
lot of responding to the teacher during the lesson. There's
never a time for them to disengage, so you know
it's going to be hard work, but they're all really
aware of that. As for our enrollment process, it's really
exciting that they're going to feel success straight away because

(03:24):
we can teach them at their level. We've got teachers
and we've got assistant teachers ready to support so higher
levels of our staff to student ratios.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
How many teachers are registered and how many aren't.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
Oh, so all of our teachers are registered teachers absolutely.
So we've got four teachers to start with and those
the classes will grow up to twenty five with those
four teachers, and then we've got twelve assistant teachers. And
the beauty of that is all of our assistant teachers
are second, third or fourth year undergraduates training to be teachers.
It's just magic.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
Okay, what's your opening day?

Speaker 2 (03:59):
Opening day is the third feb So we've got one week.
We're all at it. We've all been at it since
December doing our We're training the staff and especially in
the delivery of out so they're all trained teachers, but
especially training them and the assistant teachers and the delivery
of direct instruction. So very amazing.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
That's great, and I hope you have a great day,
and I'm sure it'll be a celebration that will be
absolutely amazing. But just a little personal bug beer about
all of this. As I was driving through the Whitecaddow
today on my way here after being being out of
town for a bit, I noticed all the different starting
dates of all the different schools, and some schools White
TAKERU says opening day as January the thirtieth. I went Yahoo,

(04:37):
and then down the road a little bit further a
Marra Maurua that said opening day is February the third.
I mean, surely, let's get them in and let's get
them learning. Let's open today, I hear you.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
I think self governing boards, that's what they can do.
I'm a parent of three sons at three different schools,
so I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, but no,
we're at thirty fib It seems to be a fairly
common date. And yeah, we've done pretty amazing to get
a school up and running in eight weeks and we
are super excited. So we're thrilled to meet all our
families and our and help our kids.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Well, good luck to you, and I wish you were
only the bes as Rose McK andenne, who is the
principal of Mastery School and that's in christ.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
Good for more from hither Duplessy Allen Drive. Listen live
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