Ascot Community School

Te Ara Huarau | School Profile Report

Background

This Profile Report was written within six months of the Education Review Office and Ascot Community 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 

Ascot Community School is located in Hawthorndale, Invercargill and provides education for students in Years 1 to 8 from an increasingly diverse community. The school has a technology suite which caters for outside schools from neighbouring areas and Blennz and Ko Taku Reo have units based there. The school’s values emphasise honesty, excellence, respect and ownership.

Ascot Community School’s strategic priorities for improving outcomes for learners are:

• that all ākonga will be given the opportunity to achieve personal excellence in reading, writing and mathematics
• to actively grow and nurture the schools’ identified competencies and personal identity of ākonga to enhance wellbeing and achievement.

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

ERO and the school are working together to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching practices and curriculum developments in foundational numeracy skills on growing competencies and personal identity for wellbeing and achievement.

The rationale for selecting this evaluation is to identify and evaluate the learning conditions and personal competencies which best support personal excellence and achievement in mathematics.

The school expects to see:

• planned changes to its teaching strategies embedded, including better support for priority learners 
• strengthened wellbeing and integration of competencies across the curriculum
• improvements in learner progress and achievement in mathematics.

Strengths 

The school can draw from the following strengths to support its goal to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching practices and curriculum developments in foundational numeracy skills on growing competencies and personal identity for wellbeing and achievement:

• there are equitable and accelerated progress and achievement outcomes for most learners across the curriculum, and effective, targeted support in place for priority learners 
• the learning climate is consistently positive with well-established respectful relationships promoting learner engagement
• systematic, collaborative inquiry and internal evaluation processes inform decision-making for improvement.

Where to next?

Moving forward, the school will prioritise:

• promoting each learner’s confidence in their identity, language, and culture, and understanding of those of others, as a foundation to develop their progress and achievement
• developing indicators that monitor and evaluate students’ progress and achievement in numeracy 
• strengthening meaningful, educationally significant connections with whānau, iwi and parents to develop greater collaboration in delivering a responsive curriculum.

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

27 March 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