Patricia Avenue School

Te Ara Huarau | School Profile Report 

Background

This Profile Report was written within 6 months of the Education Review Office and Patricia Avenue 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 

Patricia Avenue School, in Hamilton, is a specialist school dedicated to meeting the unique learning needs of students aged from 5 to 21 years. All students have Ongoing Resourcing Scheme (ORS) funding. Students learn across a range of settings, including 12 classes at the base school, 18 satellite classes in 8 host schools and a transition unit for older students in a community-based setting. 

Specialist therapy services provide transdisciplinary support for learners’ wellbeing and access to learning. A specialist teacher outreach service works with ORS funded students and staff 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’s mission – ‘Learning for Living,’ underpins the vision to enhance students’ learning, building on their needs and respects their dignity, challenging them to achieve personal standards of excellence and to reach their potential.

Patricia Avenue School’s strategic priorities for improving outcomes for learners are:

• building networks which maximises students’ opportunities to gain experience skills
• developing students’ independence and self-esteem
• enabling students to make significant personal decisions affecting their own future and wellbeing.

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

ERO and the school are working together to evaluate how well the curriculum is promoting clear and coherent pathways to inform teaching and learning that enables all learners to reach their potential and achieve success.

The rationale for selecting this evaluation is: 

• leaders have identified the need to strengthen the school’s localised and holistic curriculum to provide clear direction for teaching and learning while giving priority to Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

The school expects to see a holistic, coherent, and relevant curriculum that:

• provides clear direction for effective teaching and learning 
• identifies and supports meaningful pathways for ākonga success 
• is reflective of and responds to the diverse needs of learners. 

Strengths 

The school can draw from the following strengths to support the school in its goal to evaluate how well the curriculum is promoting clear and coherent pathways to inform teaching and learning that enables all learners to reach their potential and achieve success.

• Clear systems for tracking and reporting students’ progress with individual goals that promote students seeing themselves as successful learners.
• A culture, climate and positive relationships promote wellbeing and care of all in the school community. 
• Distributed leadership is highly responsive and sustains conditions for improving outcomes learners including provision of staff professional learning and development opportunities.
• Collaboration and coordinated staff planning for learning and wellbeing effectively responds to individual learner needs and promotes their success and wellbeing. 
• Staff teamwork that consistently demonstrate and enact high expectations for learners and their success. 
• Leadership that focuses on creating conditions for innovative solutions to sustain and improve outcomes for learners.

Where to next?

Moving forward, the school will prioritise: 

• completing and implementing the literacy curriculum
• embedding the mathematics curriculum
• developing documentation to support planning over time
• reviewing and strengthening assessment processes and documentation 
• developing partnerships with mana whenua and extending community connections. 

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

7 May 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