Where have we come from? 

Our development as a Kāhui Ako started in June 2014 before the Investment in Educational Success Initiative was even floated. Boards of Trustees of the schools in Horowhenua held a combined Boards meeting to determine the issues facing education in Horowhenua and to begin to develop some sort of collaborative approach to addressing these

The IES initiative was announced and a working party was formed. A presentation was developed and as part of ‘seeing which schools were interested’ in becoming part of a  Kāhui Ako, a series of information hui were held throughout the area. This was an opportunity for local communities to be heard, issues to be synthesised and possibilities to be explored. 

Given the size of our area, and our view that collaborative leadership was required, two Achievement Challenge Plans ( based on education pathways) were formulated. These were  submitted to the Ministry of Education late in 2016 and ratified in February 2017.

Leaders were appointed in August of 2017 and the work of developing Theories of Improvement( as they were then called) with our ‘expert partners’ Poutama Pounamu (University of Waikato) began. We also began work on setting up our Kāhui AAko structure, systems and processes.

In terms of organisation, the school principals became the management group in our area; they became the decision makers about what happens and how we proceed.

We also developed a stewardship group late in 2017 which includes Iwi partners and representatives from  our community. These were ‘put your hand up if you are interested positions and comprise people from various school Board of Trustees and a representative from Whanau Manaaki Kindergartens. Their role is to ensure that our work is relevant to the community.

We appointed  five Across school Teachers early in 2018 and approximately 25 within school teachers in late 2018.