New Plymouth Girls’ High School

School Evaluation Report

Tēnā koutou e mau manawa rahi ki te kaupapa e aro ake nei, ko te tamaiti te pūtake o te kaupapa. Mā wai rā e kawe, mā tātau katoa.

We acknowledge the collective effort, responsibility and commitment by all to ensure that the child remains at the heart of the matter.

Context 

New Plymouth Girls’ High School is a large, urban secondary school in Taranaki providing education for students in Years 9 to 13. The school strives to develop confident students who experience academic success, engage in a wide range of extra-curricular and leadership opportunities and are active partners in their learning.

There are three parts to this report.

Part A: A summary of the findings from the most recent Education Review Office (ERO) report and/or subsequent evaluation.

Part B: An evaluative summary of learner success and school conditions to inform the school board’s future strategic direction, including any education in Rumaki/bilingual settings.

Part C: The improvement actions prioritised for the school’s next evaluation cycle.

Part A: Previous Improvement Goals

Since the previous ERO report of September 2022, the school and ERO evaluated the extent to which learners were engaged with and maximised their opportunities to learn, with a particular focus on those learners where attendance was a barrier.

Expected Improvements and Findings

The school expected to see:

Increased levels of engagement and improved outcomes for priority learners.

• A moderate increase in students attending school regularly has been made.
• Improved outcomes for many priority learners is evident; however, disparity of outcomes for Māori students in Level 1 of National Certification of Educational Achievement (NCEA) remains.
• Engagement in learning data is in the early stages of being gathered by the school.

A deepened understanding about the barriers and enablers to engagement to guide targeted actions for improvement.

• Leaders, staff and students can clearly articulate the complexities of barriers to engagement and attendance, and the importance of addressing both to improve learner outcomes.
• A wide and varied range of initiatives have been implemented to address attendance and engagement; it is too early to gauge which initiatives are having a positive impact, and for which students.

Further developed evaluative capacity to support a cycle of evaluation and inquiry for ongoing school improvement.

• Leaders demonstrate an increasingly systematic approach to evaluation for improvement that enable them to determine which initiatives and processes are having the greatest impact on improving student attendance and engagement.

Part B: Current State

The following findings are to inform the school’s future priorities for improvement.

Learner Success and Wellbeing 

A large majority of students are engaged, make good progress and achieve well.

• Most students gain Level 1, 2 and 3 NCEA and a large majority gain University Entrance; disparity in achievement for Māori students in Level 1 NCEA remains. 
• Almost all Year 10 students achieve the NCEA Common Assessment numeracy and literacy Activities.
• Many students make good progress in reading and mathematics across Year 9 and 10; Māori students show accelerated progress in mathematics.
• Less than half the students attend school regularly, the school is not yet meeting the Ministry of Education 2024 targets for attendance; whilst some gains have been made, improving attendance continues to be a priority for school leaders.

Conditions to support learner success

Strategic and effective leadership focuses purposefully on improvement goals.

• Clear roles and responsibilities for staff and the board ensure aligned systems and practices to lift student engagement, wellbeing and learning outcomes.
• Leaders implement a wide range of intentional strategic initiatives to respond to students’ learning and pastoral needs.
• Appropriate evidence is used by leaders to increasingly evaluate the effectiveness of strategies designed to improve student outcomes.

The curriculum and teaching are increasingly responsive to learner engagement and achievement.

• Students have many opportunities to learn across the breadth and depth of The New Zealand Curriculum, with increasing focus on literacy and numeracy as a foundational skills preparing them well for the requirements of NCEA.
• Early identification of students with additional learning needs means individual education plans are put in place to support successful outcomes for students.
• Teachers are strengthening learning relationships with students and are beginning to use engagement data to make adaptations to practice.

The school has well aligned systems, structures and practices to drive success and improvement.

• Aligned attendance, engagement and pastoral systems contribute to a timely, cohesive and personalised to respond to student needs.
• A wide range of initiatives and interventions effectively support student wellbeing and inclusion; leaders and teachers are considering a range of ways to measure the impact of initiatives on outcomes for students.
• Leaders and the board have clearly identified strategic goals and targets to improve student attendance, engagement, wellbeing and achievement; professional development is aligned to these strategic goals.

Part C: Where to next? 

The agreed next steps for the school are to: 

• consolidate a consistent understanding of high-quality teaching and learning to respond to a wide range of student learning and pastoral needs, including Māori students at NCEA Level 1 
• embed professional learning for leaders and teachers to more fully understand students’ cultural identity, values and transfer the learning to classroom practice and school-wide practices 
• continue to collect and analyse attendance information to help determine what works best to improve regular school attendance for students.

The agreed actions for the next improvement cycle and timeframes are as follows.

Within six months:

• evaluate how well student feedback and ideas is currently collected and used in decision making to identify areas for improvement
• gather whānau, student and staff feedback and ideas to determine which initiatives and processes are having the greatest impact on improving student achievement, attendance and engagement and refine next steps
• continue to engage in targeted professional learning to support a shared understanding of the role teachers and leaders play in giving effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and evaluate the impact on students and whānau

Every six months:

• continue to collect and analyse engagement, attendance, achievement and progress data, to ensure strategies are working, and use this information to make iterative improvements to strategies and practices

Annually:

• analyse and report attendance, engagement, wellbeing and achievement outcomes to the board and community; in partnership with whānau, students and teachers, use this information to inform the next strategic steps.

Actions taken against these next steps are expected to result in:

• a consistent understanding and implementation of high-quality teaching and learning; improved engagement and achievement outcomes for all
• students and their whānau knowing that their identity, language and culture are understood, valued and nurtured by the school
• improved and sustained regular student attendance.

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

Me mahi tahi tonu tātau, kia whai oranga a tātau tamariki
Let’s continue to work together for the greater good of all children

Shelley Booysen
Director of Schools

4 December 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