Highlands Intermediate

Te Ara Huarau | School Profile Report

Background

This Profile Report was written within 6 months of the Education Review Office and Highlands Intermediate 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 

Highlands Intermediate is a co-educational intermediate school located in New Plymouth, Taranaki. It caters for learners in years 7 and 8.

Highlands Intermediate’s strategic priorities for improving outcomes for learners are:

• ensuring a responsive curriculum, effective teaching, and quality opportunities to learn

• ensuring a teaching team that are building their professional capability and collective capacity

• promoting powerful connections and relationships with parents and whānau

• ensuring effective leadership is a characteristic across the school and is focused on student outcomes that are equitable and where excellence is expected.

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

ERO and the school are working together to evaluate how well learners respond to new ways of teaching and learning mathematics.

The rationale for selecting this evaluation is:

• it is timely to investigate how mathematics can be further improved

• the school wants to evaluate new ways of teaching and learning mathematics that improve valued outcomes

• alignment with the school’s strategic goals.

The school expects to see:

• sustained or improved achievement and progress in mathematics for all learners

• learners and teachers reporting improved outcomes in engagement

• culturally responsive teaching practices that cater to a wide range of needs in engaging ways

• reciprocal and learning centred relationships with whānau that support improved learner outcomes.

Strengths

The school can draw from the following strengths to support its goal to evaluate how well learners respond to new ways of teaching and learning mathematics.

• embedded systems and processes to track the achievement and progress of all learners

• appropriate internal and external expertise already in place to support this work

• a school environment that increasingly responds to learners in relational and culturally responsive ways

• an established inquiry model that can be used to evaluate success.

Where to next?

Moving forward, the school will prioritise:

• using internal and external expertise to support teacher inquiry and professional learning in mathematics

• finding ways to enrich mathematics experiences that deepens learning

• increasing the scrutiny of learning evidence to ensure a more responsive experience for all learners in mathematics

• using established systems to monitor valued learner outcomes.

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 Schools

 28 April 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