Wairau Valley Special School

Te Ara Huarau | School Profile Report  

Background 

This Profile Report was written within six months of the Education Review Office and ​Wairau Valley Special 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  

Wairau Valley Special School is in Glenfield, Auckland. It provides education for ākonga with unique learning and health needs aged between the ages of five to 21 years old. All ākonga have Ongoing Resourcing Scheme (ORS) funding. 

The school has a base site and twelve satellite sites in host schools across the North Shore and Hibiscus Coast. The school continues to navigate and manage roll growth along with the employment and property demands associated with this. 

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 operates a specialist teacher outreach service that works with individual ORS funded students enrolled in local schools. 

The school continues to navigate and manage roll growth pressures along with the employment and property demands associated with this. 

The school is guided by its values of acceptance, respect and understanding. The school’s whakatauki is ‘Ehara taku toa, he takitahi, he toa takitini’ – ‘My success is not mine alone, as success is the work of many’. 

​​Wairau Valley Special School​’s strategic priorities for improving outcomes for ākonga are: 

• a culturally safe and inclusive environment 
• a curriculum that supports ākonga to explore, learn and succeed 
• to have a committed staff with the skills, knowledge and understanding to work with ākonga across the school. 

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

ERO and the school are working together to evaluate how well school assessment practices support ākonga to explore, learn and succeed to reach their potential.  

The rationale for selecting this evaluation is to:  

• ensure assessment practices inform teaching and learning opportunities to guide ākonga next steps  
• provide meaningful and authentic culturally responsive assessment for ākonga 
• provide systems and processes that foster collaboration and moderation assessment practices school wide.  

The school expects to see: 

• ākonga making gains in independence, confidence and engagement 
• teachers and staff using culturally responsive assessment practices to further inform personalised learning outcomes for ākonga. 

Strengths  

The school can draw from the following strengths to support its goal to evaluate how well assessment practices support ākonga to explore, learn and succeed to reach their potential.  

• Students display a strong sense of belonging, see themselves as learners and make individual progress in relation to their learning goals.  
• School culture of collaboration and learning-centred partnerships with whānau through an emotionally supportive environment. 
• Adaptive integrated school curriculum with a strong environmental focus that enables programmes to support ākonga in their learning and complex needs.  
• Innovative teaching and learning practices across the school that fosters positive relationships. 
• Effective and well-established school leaders that are solution focused, fostering conditions for coaching and mentoring to build staff teaching and learning capability. 
• Leaders support the ongoing development of teachers’ individual and collective capability. 

Where to next? 

Moving forward, the school will prioritise:  

• building staff capacity and capability in assessment practices by: 
• working with external professional development providers and internal expertise to support culturally responsive assessment practices 
• use Te Poutama Reo framework to guide the implementation of culturally responsive practices including their monitoring and evaluation 
• continuing to use a range of collaborative communication processes to sustain staff learning and development to build a shared language of learning across the 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 

​​10 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