Vaughan Couillault: Secondary Principals Association president on the Government's new 'Parent Portal' initiative

The Government's launching a new tool to give parents greater access to what their children are learning at school. 

Education Minister Erica Stanford introduced the 'Parent Portal', yesterday, designed to provide a "clear, easy-to-understand year-by-year guide" to topics in English and maths. 

More subjects will be added as the Government continues its curriculum refresh. 

Secondary Principals Association president Vaughan Couillault talks to Mike Hosking about the initiative. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We have a parent portal which presumably dovetails with the
local schools portal. It will have lessened summaries for each year,
group videos, tools to help students learn at home. Secondary
Principals Association President barn Coyo is back with us one morning.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Good morning, how are you well?

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Are we on the right track here?

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Look, any opportunity to involve parents and Farno and learning
is a good opportunity because we know that kids learn
better when their families know what's going on at school.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Does any well, does it take anything that an active
parent wouldn't already do?

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Probably not. It just curates it into an easier to
find space. So you know, you can go and look
up past tommosis and activity exams on enzi Coa's website.
On the portal, you can just click in one place.
So it's more of a curation of stuff than necessarily
creating new resources. However, when you're talking about the curriculum refresh,
that is a new piece of so all of that

(00:53):
stuff by default will be new resource.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yes, indeed it well? Does it dovetail and specifically with
what any given school doing or would you need to
leap between portals and talk to teachers and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
At this stage, there's not that interconnectivity. It is a
resource about what's going on with the curriculum refresh and
structured literacy, structured numeracy and the Literacy Numeracy corecords. It's
for ZQA. It's not a two way quick communication tool
between schools and the ministry resources.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Okay out of ten, I know this is a simple question.
Ten being brilliant, one being a disaster. Are we are
we getting a pass mark here?

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Oh? It's definitely between seven and ten at the minute.
It's a good idea. It's not fully populated at this
point because it's still just been released before all the
resources are there, so it'll hopefully get better over time.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Okay, Well, appreciate it very much. Bon Koyo, who's the
Secondary Principals Association President. For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast,
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