Beaconsfield School

Te Ara Huarau | School Profile Report

Background

This Profile Report was written within 12 months of the Education Review Office and Beaconsfield 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 

Beaconsfield School is a rural school for students in Years 1-8 located in Otipua, South Canterbury. The school’s vision for all students is to achieve excellence in learning and wellbeing through the school’s values of excellence, perseverance, respect, initiative and creativity.

Beaconsfield School’s strategic priorities for improving outcomes for learners are:

• developing consistent and strong community partnerships to support student’s learning and wellbeing.
• provision of an innovative, adaptive, exciting, forward-thinking curriculum that reflects students’ lives and the local rural area.
• fostering happy, healthy, engaged and flourishing children and staff.

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

ERO and the school are working together to evaluate how well the school’s localised curriculum and explicit, structured teaching is supporting all learners to make progress and achieve in literacy and mathematics.

The rationale for selecting this evaluation is:

• the school has been working in collaboration with its community to review and develop its local curriculum to better reflect the values and aspirations of students and the local community
• the school wants to further improve all students’ achievement and progress in literacy and mathematics.

The school expects to see students:

• making appropriate progress and achieving at or above expected curriculum levels in literacy and mathematics
• developing a positive identity and the competencies to be a lifelong learner
• reporting high levels of engagement in learning that is relevant and responsive to their needs, interests and aspirations.

Strengths

The school can draw from the following strengths to achieve its goal of improving student progress and achievement in literacy, mathematics and development of life-long learning competencies:

• responsive curriculum which offers relevant, authentic opportunities to learn in and beyond the class and which reflects the local rural community
• teachers who are well-engaged in ongoing professional learning in the teaching of literacy and mathematics
• active partnerships with parents support learning
• positive, supportive relationships between teachers and students and between students that underpins a collaborative learning culture.

Where to next?

Moving forward, the school will prioritise:

• professional learning for staff in explicit, structured teaching of literacy and mathematics
• continued development of the school curriculum – including implementation of national curriculum developments
• review and strengthening of assessment practices to better support explicit teaching and student self-assessment capability.

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

17 May 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