Valley School

Te Ara Huarau | School Profile Report

Background

This Profile Report was written within four months of the Education Review Office and Valley 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

Valley School is located in Pukekohe, providing education for students in Years 1 to 6. The school hosts a satellite unit of Parkside Special School on-site. Two new deputy principals have recently been employed.

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

• to build the long-term sustainability and capability of staff and effectiveness of systems within and across the school, to achieve the very best outcomes for students
• to enable students and staff to enjoy a safe and empowering learning environment that caters for the needs of diverse learners
• to maintain partnerships with iwi and the community that contribute to Māori learners enjoying success as Māori.

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

ERO and the school are working together to evaluate the effectiveness of targeted actions to increase learner outcomes in literacy that enable equitable outcomes for identified learners. Growing responsive partnerships for learning and strengthening evaluation capability continue to be ongoing priorities for the school.

The rationale for selecting this evaluation is: 

• the school’s priority to increase achievement and equitable outcomes for all learners
• the opportunity to strengthen students’ empowerment and ownership of their learning
• the importance of engaging in effective partnerships with students and whānau to further support learning.

The school expects to see improved progress and equitable outcomes for all students in literacy.

Strengths

The school can draw from the following strengths to support its goal of increasing achievement outcomes in literacy:

• an inclusive, caring environment for students that enables a strong sense of belonging and engagement
• strategic employment of staff with a range of skills and knowledge that promotes a positive, collaborative culture for learning
• distributed leadership that is increasingly building and modelling deeper levels of reflective practice to inform improvement.

Where to next?

Moving forward, the school will prioritise:

• refining processes and practices that enable increased achievement and equitable outcomes for learners
• further strengthening the use of assessment data to show rates of progress and inform targeted actions for planning and teaching
• continuing to build learning-centred partnerships with parents and whānau, and evaluation capability across the school for ongoing improvement.

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

4 December 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