There are many different sports on offer at West End School.  West End School has its own Rippa Rugby teams, Basketball, Hockey, Netball and Table Tennis.  Throughout the term we will be building this further to include more sports. 

Our staff love to see students enjoying sport, they take teams and groups of students out for games at lunchtime, as well as after school practices and local inter-school competitions. 

Rippa Rugby Tournament video

We consult with our local iwi, Rangitāne ō Manawatū, engaging in professional development around tikanga, significant places and people, their stories and history.  Our students have all visited Te Rangimarie Marae to learn the tikanga of the marae, and senior students have a noho every 2 years. We promote the learning of where our students and their whānau are from, and the connections they have to each other. 

We have Kapa Haka sessions for all our teams, and perform at Pae Tamariki. Every day our junior classes in Tipuranga have Mana Aoturoa, where many aspects of Te Ao, Te Reo, myths and waiata are learned and discussed.  This is a tikanga based focus.

West End School engages in Whānau Hui consultation every term. We consult with our community around what they would like to see at Te Kura O Urumutu, how they can help/contribute and how we celebrate special days such as Matariki/Puanga. 

Our school has karakia to start and end the day and for kai. We also have our own school waiata. Pōwhiri is usually twice a term. This is an opportunity to formally welcome new students, whānau and staff to our kura. 

Our aim is to provide experiences and learning through our connections with Rangitāne ō Manawatū and foster kotahitanga, a feeling of belonging amongst our children, staff and whānau.

For our Matariki and Arbour Day celebrations in 2021, our whole school worked together to plant a school orchard, where we are growing many different fruit trees, including, apples, peaches, feijoas, citrus, lemons, limes, and apricots, as well as planting kumara.  We have also installed a swale system for irrigation which was successful over summer. 

We are educating our tamariki on how to plant, put nutrition back into the soil for the plants and how to cook the things we’ve grown.  

We have linked some of our science lessons to how to care for our environment - in Term 1, the whole school learned about bees and their importance.  Our Enviro group meets once a week to discuss the needs of our school to maintain the focus of how to look after our school environment and share the knowledge to their peers.

West End School is fortunate to have an indoor swimming pool on school grounds where students have free weekly swimming lessons provided in Term 1 and Term 4 by the amazing team at Hilton Brown Swimming. 

We also hold our school swimming sports at the pool in Term 1. Swimming is an important part of our curriculum and a vital skill for children to have in New Zealand as we have so many great opportunities to enjoy being in the water.

As part of living our school value of Kotahitanga, the West End School Board runs regular (termly) rolling consultation meetings with our community. In these meetings the Board collects voice from our West End Whānau about our strategic goals and aims for the school. This voice is then included in discussions and considerations are made for strategic planning for the future of our awesome school.

We love Science at West End School and science learning is an important part of classroom learning programmes. 

Additionally, we are very proud to offer “Sci-Fri with Dr. A” which is a chance for all of our children to spend time with Dr. Sandra Accari on Friday’s learning how to think like a scientist. Each term, Dr. A, and our amazing staff support our children to pursue their own lines of scientific inquiry. 

Sci-Fri video link

West End School has a very active student council.  We have student representatives in our senior classes and year 3 /4 team.  One of the goals of our Student Council leaders is to promote student voice by listening to the ideas of others.  They plan and implement projects from student feedback to help improve our kura.  

Some projects which have been developed are goal posts for our field, a disability swing, friendship benches and the development of clubs.  

Our Student Council also organises and runs our very popular Vibe Assemblies held every few weeks where our school community.