|Author||Debbie Knowles and Julie Mulcahy|
|GT Issue||2009 T1|
What You Need To Know Before Your Child Starts Secondary School is a handbook to help parents understand secondary schools in New Zealand. The authors are experienced teachers and parents who now run an educational consultancy business, Springboard New Zealand.
The book aims to help provide answers to questions about secondary school life including:
- How does NCEA work in simple terms?
- Why do some schools use other forms of assessment?
- How do I choose a secondary school for my child: Single sex versus co-educational?
- Teachers: who are they and what do they do?
- What legal rights do schools have to discipline my child?
- What learning support is available and how do we find it?
The book is easy to read and written in a very friendly voice. The chapters are clearly divided into broad topics and the book is easy to navigate to find the specific information you need. It includes anecdotal case study examples to illustrate the chapter themes, and is packed full of tips and resources to access further information if your questions haven’t been answered fully.
What You Need To Know Before Your Child Starts Secondary School would be invaluable for parents of Year 7 and 8 students. As the parent of a student in Year 10 in 2009 I wish this had been published a year ago! However I still found a wealth of useful information, with the chapters on systems of assessment and subject choices being particularly interesting.
Highly recommended for parents and as a resource for school and community libraries.