Awahono School - Grey Valley

Te Ara Huarau | School Profile Report

Background

This Profile Report was written within 24 months of the Education Review Office and Awahono School – Grey Valley 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 

Awahono School – Grey Valley is a rural school that caters for students in Years 1 to 8 situated in in the township of Ahaura. The school’s vision is to have students who are “Respectful, Responsible, Resilient Learners”. This vision encompasses the values, beliefs and key competencies that are embedded into learning programmes and everyday activities.

Awahono School – Grey Valley strategic priorities for improving outcomes for learners are to:

• improve engagement, progress and achievement for all tamariki
• promote wellbeing through explicit curriculum opportunities that link directly with the school culture, values and key competencies
• be responsive to the needs, interests, strengths, cultures and aspirations of all learners
• work with the cluster of local schools to further enhance learning opportunities.

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

ERO and the school are working together to evaluate the effectiveness of the play-based curriculum and local curriculum on learning outcomes for the students.

The rationale for selecting this evaluation is to:

• ensure the needs, interests, strengths, cultures and aspirations of all learners are met
• give further insight for leaders and teachers who have researched and developed guiding documents for the local curriculum and play based learning to ensure consistency of practice across the school.

The school expects to see a deeper understanding of the play-based philosophy and teachers clearly articulating how classroom programmes and learning opportunities for all tamariki link to the local curriculum.

Strengths

The school can draw from the following strengths to support the school in its goal to evaluate the effectiveness of play-based learning programmes and the local curriculum.

• strong leadership for learning across the school.
• all staff committed to new initiatives through research, targeted professional development focused on improving engagement and learning opportunities for all tamariki and informed through robust evaluation.
• community support and staff that know the community well and have built educationally powerful relationships.

Where to next?

Moving forward, the school will prioritise:

• further embedding learning style approaches across the school to increase learning opportunities for tamariki
• evaluating how effective the school vision is impacting on the positive culture in and out of 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
28 September 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