Sommerville School

Te Ara Huarau | School Profile Report 

Background  

This Profile Report was written within six months of the Education Review Office and ​Sommerville 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 

This report is part of a nationally coordinated evaluation of 27-day specialist schools during the second half of 2023. This included the development of day specialist school evaluation indicators by ERO with significant input from principals, staff, and the Special Education Principals’ Association of New Zealand (SEPAnz). 

Context  

Sommerville School is in Panmure, Auckland. It provides education for students with intellectual disabilities, many of whom may also have physical, sensory or behaviour disabilities. Students are aged between five and 21 years of age and receive funding from the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme (ORS). The school has two base sites, 13 satellite sites located in local host schools, and a community-based transition unit.  

The school employs a specialist therapy team that includes speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, and behaviour specialists, who support the learning and wellbeing of students. The school also operates a large specialist teacher outreach service that supports ORS funded students enrolled in 24 schools in the central east Auckland area. 

The school continues to navigate and manage roll growth pressures along with the employment and property demands associated with this, including the suitability of the base school property.  

The school’s vision statement is ‘Together, learning to live our best lives’, and the school’s values are Kia Hono - Connected and Kia Māia - Courageous.  

​​Sommerville School​’s strategic priorities for improving outcomes for learners are: 

• developing a Sommerville curriculum that is responsive to personalised learning needs 
• preparing older students and their whānau for the life beyond Sommerville 
• growing great staff who lead and collaborate to enrich learner outcomes. 

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

ERO and the school are working together to build schoolwide consistency by evaluating how well systems and processes support effective teaching, assessment and learning practices.  

As the school continues to experience roll growth and additional staff appointments, the rationale for selecting this evaluation is to continue to ensure:  

• consistent effective teaching, assessment and learning practices  
• induction of new staff and ongoing professional development programmes are effective in improving equitable and excellence outcomes for all students.  

The school expects to see: 

• learners and whānau moving confidently through and across the school  
• optimised learner engagement to ensure all students achieve success  
• continuously refined and personalised curriculum learning pathways for each learner, based on effective evidence-based theories and evaluation practices 
• staff confidently using effective teaching and learning pedagogy and can articulate what the language of learning practice looks like in Sommerville School’s environment.  

Strengths  

The school can draw from the following strengths to support its goal to build schoolwide consistency by evaluating how well systems and processes enable effective teaching, assessment and learning practices.  

• Highly personalised individual goals and learning programmes that includes comprehensive support for students with very high health needs.  
• Schoolwide culture, vision and values provide a warm, welcoming, and friendly environment. 
• Educationally powerful connections with whānau.  
• Effective and distributed leadership with an ongoing improvement mindset that encourages all staff to take a lead role in projects, research, and innovation.  
• Systems and processes which promote collaboration for all staff to support each learner to succeed. 
• Strong reciprocal relationships across the school and with host schools, specialist therapy services, outreach services, local schools, and the wider community. 

Where to next? 

Moving forward, the school will prioritise:  

• developing a schoolwide shared language of learning  
• continuing to build a schoolwide shared understanding of what effective practice in teaching, assessment and learning practices looks like. 
• continuing to develop and document the school curriculum and assessment refinements that respond to learners and the ongoing development of new staff in a rapidly growing 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​ 

​​9 April 2024​   

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