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PRINCIPAL FOR NEWLY UPGRADED QUEENSTOWN SCHOOL

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January, 2011

At 26, Australian teacher Rebekah Key was planning to head home to do some post-graduate Masters study this year, but is excited to instead be elevated to principal of Queenstown's newly state-integrated Kingsview School.

Formerly the Southern Lakes Christian School, the school's Frankton premises has undergone a $150,000 to $200,000 school holiday makeover. Builders and tradesmen, have been helped by school board and parent volunteers working seven days, well into the wee hours to complete the project in time for the new 4-classroom school's February 7 opening.

Ms Key, who completed undergraduate studies in History and English at University before graduating with her teaching degree, aged 20, has been teaching for six years. Most recently she was Year 8 dean at Christchurch's Middleton Grange School where she taught for four years and prior to that she taught in a state school in Tasmania.

I had other plans for this year, but I met the board and I was so impressed with the vision. They've been through up's and down's during the past 15 years, but they're a group of people who are prepared to work hard to achieve the real dream they have for this school, Ms Key said.
I was so impressed I put my plans on hold.

The newly integrated school was approved by the ministry to open with a roll of 100 and expected to open with 17 students, years 10 to 8, to start the year. That was expected to grow up to 100 within three years.

A second fulltime teacher, Marlene van Tonder, of Hamilton's Kingsway School, has been appointed from applicants throughout New Zealand. She comes from a Christian teaching background in New Zealand and internationally and specialises in numeracy and science.

Ms Key said they had managed to configure the structure so that part-time specialist music, art, physical education and language teachers could also be employed using ministry funding.

Usually a small class ratio is at the expense of specialist teachers but we are able to have both.
Younger students, which Ms Key would teach, would have a one to five teacher/student ratio and the older students would have a one to10 ratio, which Ms Key said was fantastic.

She said her vision for the school was for a first rate education, high academic standards and excellence in literacy and numeracy, based on Christian principles with an emphasis on character development.

Ms Key has just returned from Australia where she has been buying up on curriculum resources and the school would be tapping into a large national resource network through the NZCPT (New Zealand Christian Proprietors Trust).