12 June 2026

The term "home-school partnership" is one we throw around quite easily. But what does a truly strong partnership look like?

Whenever I reflect on what makes relationships last, I often find myself returning to the work of renowned relationship expert John Gottman. You might be familiar with his famous 5:1 ratio. Through extensive research, Gottman discovered that for a relationship to thrive, there need to be at least five positive interactions for every single negative one.

While his focus was on marriages - admittedly a much closer bond than home and school! - the principle applies beautifully to our school community. Over the course of a school year, it is easy for a partnership to slip into a lower ratio if we aren’t proactive about its maintenance.

We are in the "children business," which is ultimately the human business. Humans are emotional beings - which is a wonderful thing - but it means there are plenty of opportunities for inadvertent "withdrawals."

In any given week, a teacher might need to call home to discuss a challenging incident, or a parent might send an email sharing a concern the school wasn't aware of. This is completely normal and expected. However, to navigate these moments constructively - especially when they carry a bit of a negative charge - we need a healthy buffer of positive interactions to keep the relationship strong and be able to bend in a breeze.

Those positive "deposits" don’t have to be grand gestures. They can be as simple as a smile and hello!

We are incredibly fortunate here. Because we see many of you daily, we have constant opportunities to engage, communicate, and naturally form tighter community bonds.

Building this foundation takes a conscious effort from all of us. Imagine if the school only contacted home when a child misbehaved, and home only contacted the school to complain. John Gottman would undoubtedly conclude that the "marriage" was on the rocks! We want to be confident that when those inevitable, difficult conversations do happen, our foundation is strong enough to support a genuinely fruitful discussion.

Before returning to New Zealand, I spent many years teaching in London. Parents there were literally buzzed into the building. We only saw them a few times a year - unless of course I was invited to a child’s birthday party (being young, energetic, and away from home, I think I was viewed as the free entertainment, and let me tell you - some of those parties were a bit wild back then!).

While our "Tomorrow’s Schools" model has its challenges - placing high expectations on parents to support the school through the Board, fundraising, or volunteering - it also means we don't have those artificial barriers. We know that a genuinely strong home-school partnership brings massive benefits for our tamariki, including:

• Greater interest, motivation, and engagement in learning

• More tailored support for individual needs

• Better school attendance

• Enhanced overall wellbeing as schools and whānau work hand-in-hand

Let’s keep our relationship ratios as optimal as we can. Sometimes it takes a little perseverance, but just like we tell the children: we can... keep trying, and don’t give up!

On that note, please make sure you are booked into our upcoming parent/teacher progress meetings. Our teachers are keen to share the new curriculum levels.

We look forward to your feedback.

Ngā mihi nui