Queen Charlotte College

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 

Queen Charlotte College is a state, co-educational secondary school, located in Picton. It provides education for learners from Years 7 to 13. Aquaculture and construction trade academies operate from the school site. The school’s vision is ‘Mo Ake Tonu E | To aspire forever’.

There are two parts to this report.

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

Part A: Current State

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

Learner Success and Wellbeing 

Improvements are required to ensure all learners are engaged, making sufficient progress and achieving well.

• Most Year 7 learners enter the school below expected curriculum levels in literacy and mathematics; the school accelerates the progress of a small majority by the end of Year 10.
• Year 11 learners’ achievement at Level 1 of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) has declined significantly over the past five years; the large majority of learners who remain at the school leave with NCEA Level 2.
• The school has yet to address inequity of achievement for Māori learners.
• Regular attendance is improving; however, the school remains considerably below the Ministry of Education target as few students attend regularly.

Conditions to support learner success

Leaders are working towards fostering a culture committed to quality teaching and equity and excellence in learner outcomes.

• Leaders are taking steps towards planning, monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of consistent processes and practices to improve engagement, progress, achievement and wellbeing.
• Senior leaders are beginning to build middle leaders’ capabilities to analyse achievement and progress data and use it to inform planning and evaluate the impact of teaching in their areas. 

The school is improving teaching and learning.

• Learners have sufficient opportunities to learn across the breadth and depth of the curriculum.
• The establishment of a ‘hub’ for Year 7 and 8 students enables closer, more effective teacher collaboration to improve literacy and mathematics progress and achievement for these learners.
• Leaders and teachers are beginning to develop shared understanding of high quality teaching and learning practices to benefit learner outcomes.
• Leaders and teachers are yet to analyse or use progress and achievement information effectively to support responsive planning and improve learner outcomes school wide.

The school is taking steps to strengthen the support it provides to ensure learners’ engagement, progress and achievement.

• Learners report they enjoy being in a small school that provides a variety of curriculum and co-curricular opportunities. 
• Learners, whānau, and teachers collaborate to set and monitor goals; these are beginning to build learner and whānau understanding of progress and achievement.
• Leaders and teachers are establishing planning and conditions to support improvements in the quality of education for learners; school values, behaviour management and restorative practices have been reviewed and have reduced pastoral incidents. 
• The board have adopted new processes for reporting and to ensure consistent review processes of school policies.

Part B: Where to next?

The agreed next steps for the school are to: 

• embed revised school values and align these with the school’s culture, systems and expectations to improve the consistency of teachers’ responses and raise learner engagement 
• develop and implement shared understanding of high quality teaching and learning practices
• develop and implement consistent assessment plans, tools and school wide analysis, to effectively evaluate learner progress and achievement, enable aligned reporting systems, and inform planning
• improve engagement and sufficiently accelerate the progress of Years 7 to 10 learners in literacy and mathematics
• significantly increase the levels of regular attendance.

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

Within six months:

• identify professional learning opportunities to build teachers’ understanding and capabilities in high quality teaching, learning and assessment practices with particular focus on literacy and mathematics in Years 7 to 10
• establish implementation planning with appropriate measures, indicators and reporting timeframes to improve attendance, engagement, progress and achievement 
• complete the review of the school values and incorporate these consistently throughout school wide culture, systems and expectations
• establish termly review to ensure that systems, processes and practices for monitoring, reporting on and responding to attendance, engagement, progress and achievement are effective and providing useful information for the board and leaders to base decisions on  

Every six months:

• teachers monitor and report on Year 7 to 10 students’ progress and achievement in literacy and mathematics, informed by across-school checking of assessment judgements 
• senior leaders report to the board on student attendance, engagement and achievement to identify trends and emerging needs and know about the effectiveness of strategies and interventions
• middle and senior leaders evaluate areas of strength and the quality of teaching, learning and assessment practices to inform planning for future professional learning for teachers 

Annually:

• teachers continue to compare and analyse achievement data across the school for consistency of achievement judgements and to inform next steps in learning 
• leaders analyse and report progress and achievement data to the board to strategically plan actions that continue to improve equitable achievement for Years 7 to 10 learners in literacy and mathematics and for Years 11 to 13 learners in NCEA
• board and leaders scrutinise student attendance and engagement information to know about the effective delivery of strategic goals and identify improvement priorities. 

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

• improved teacher capability in teaching and assessment practices and data analysis that meaningfully informs planning
• improved progress and achievement in literacy and mathematics for learners in Years 7 to 10
• increased success in National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) 
• raised learner engagement and levels of regular 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

3 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