Beachlands School

Te Ara Huarau | School Profile Report

Background

This Profile Report was written within 16 months of the Education Review Office and Beachlands School working in Te Ara Huarau, an improvement evaluation approach used in most English Medium State and State Integrated Schools. For more information about Te Ara Huarau see ERO’s website. www.ero.govt.nz

Context 

Beachlands School is a full primary school catering for students in Years 1 to 8, located east of Auckland on the Pohutukawa coast. The school serves a rapidly expanding community. The school’s vision states every day we strive to provide effective learning opportunities that ensure our people have the skills needed to succeed within the ever-changing world, with the school’s motto, everyday learning and growing together, me mātua ra.

Beachlands School is a green - gold enviro school. This means the school is committed to creating a healthy, peaceful, sustainable world through learning and taking action together.

Beachlands School’s strategic priorities for improving outcomes for learners are:

• providing opportunities and resources for learning and growing together
• enhancing the Beachlands School experience for all
• strengthening connections within and beyond the school.

You can find a copy of the school’s strategic and annual plan on Beachlands School’s website.

ERO and the school are working together to evaluate how effectively collaborative practices are lifting progress and achievement for all learners.

The rationale for selecting this evaluation is to:

• build teaching pedagogy and practice that provides opportunities for equitable and excellent outcomes
• support staff to work in collaborative ways to ensure all students make progress with their learning goals in a timely manner
• embed and sustain schoolwide collaborative practice so that students transition seamlessly from new entrants to Year 8
• further develop student agency so that students are enabled to self-manage and are supported to influence their own learning.

The school expects to see:

• increased opportunities for teachers to share experiences, successes, challenges and model teaching practice to expand pedagogical knowledge and teach in new ways
• teaching designed around student strengths and needs and using the collective knowledge of teachers to embed best practice
• students learning in collaborative, innovative and teacher guided ways
• students having choice, voice and ownership of their learning across years 1 to 8.

Strengths

The school can draw from the following strengths to support its goal to lift progress and achievement through collaborative practices:

• leadership that demonstrates ongoing commitment to achieving the school’s strategic direction
• provision of professional learning development and coaching programmes that effectively builds teacher capability
• assessment systems effectively identify, monitor and report student’s progress and achievement
• staff dedicated and committed to living the Beachlands School FERN values in their everyday practice and respond well to the diverse needs of learners.

Where to next?

Moving forward, the school will prioritise:

• further embedding and sustaining formative assessment practices
• learning coaching models that see students coaching students particularly in Years 5 to 8
• continuing to strengthen learning focused relationships with whānau
• strengthening connections within and beyond our school.

ERO’s role will be to support the school in its evaluation for improvement cycle to improve outcomes for all learners. ERO will support the school in reporting their progress to the community. The next public report on ERO’s website will be a Te Ara Huarau | School Evaluation Report and is due within three years.

Shelley Booysen
Director of Schools

5 May 2023

About the School

The Education Counts website provides further information about the school’s student population, student engagement and student achievement.  educationcounts.govt.nz/home