KEY POINTS:
Twelve-year-old international student Geonwoo Lee is excited at the prospect of being able to talk face-to-face with his parents in Korea, after having not seen them since he arrived nine months ago.
"I talk to them on the phone very often and I hear their voices, but I miss seeing their faces. I really miss them a lot." he said.
Geonwoo will be one of the Takapuna Normal Intermediate pupils who will benefit from the school's decision to extend the use of its video-conferencing equipment to link international students with their parents back home.
Principal Owen Alexander yesterday acknowledged that being away from their parents was one of the biggest challenges international students faced.
"When you're just a young kid, being away from your mum and dad is a huge challenge, and one of the best forms of support we can give them is to help facilitate regular contact with their folks," he said.
The video telecommunication system, which the school has been trialling, uses the internet to stream audio and video images in real time, and is projected onto large screens in classrooms.
Mr Alexander said international students at the school would, from next year, be able to book the $7000 equipment, which was set up for foreign language learning, free-of-charge at other times if they wanted to have face-to-face live conversations with their parents.
He will visit South Korea, where most of his international students are from, to ensure their parents have access to compatible visual collaboration systems, and discuss the possibility of holding regular video conferences for parents.
Takapuna Intermediate has 30 international students, some as young as 10, from Korea, China and Hong Kong - and the news has already generated some excitement.
Grace Choi, 12, who came to New Zealand with her mother and sister from Korea nine months ago, says she is looking forward to being able to see her father's face when she greets him during the next Chinese and Korean New Year.
She said it would be the first time she would be apart from her father, who works in China, during the festive season.
Korean education agent Do Hee Seo, who has placed 15 international students from South Korea at the school, said video conferencing was the next best thing to being here for Korean parents.
"I think Korean parents will be very keen," she said. "It will be very good that parents are able to actually see with their own eyes how the children are doing at school, and that will be very reassuring."
Mr Alexander said it was important for schools to look at how they could provide better support for international students, as they played an important role for New Zealand schools. International students paid $10,000 in annual school fees, and $225 a week in homestay charges plus other living expenses, to be at Takapuna Intermediate School.
"The fees paid by our international students make up more than half of our school's income," he said.
"That enables us to employ more staff, including five teacher aids, and introduce a wider range of extracurricular activities, which benefit all our students."
