Christchurch East School

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 

Christchurch East School is located in central Christchurch and provides education for learners in Years 1 to 8. The school’s vision is to ‘nurture minds, build character and create communities’. The school provides technology education for other local schools. Over recent years the school has experienced changes in the leadership team and significant roll growth, including a number of students with English as their second language. 

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 

• The majority of students are achieving at expected curriculum levels in reading, writing and mathematics.
• Some groups of students are not achieving as well as others; Māori students are not achieving as well non-Māori in reading and mathematics, and boys are not achieving as well as girls in reading and writing.
• Less than half the students are attending school regularly; the school is yet to meet the Ministry of Education regular attendance target.

Conditions to support learner success

• Leaders have implemented effective systems to identify, monitor and oversee support for learners with different needs. 
• Leaders are taking steps to ensure provision of consistent school wide support for English language learners.
• Leaders have developed clear, shared team expectations and practices to support teachers’ consistent practices for learning, assessment and behaviour management within their teams.

• Teachers use structured literacy approaches to support reading and writing progress and achievement; these are not yet consistent and coherent across the school.
• Programme planning and collaborative teaching is increasingly responding to learner's strengths, needs and interests, and is extending the range of meaningful learning opportunities. 
• Teachers develop mutually respectful relationships with learners; this supports engagement, wellbeing and achievement.

• Local community partnerships strengthen learning opportunities that engage learners.  
• Leaders and teachers increasingly identify, draw on, and work with community resources including support agencies, to improve learner wellbeing. 
• Leaders and teachers are beginning to facilitate regular parent engagement and their participation in the life of the school. 
• The board adequately monitors learner achievement information and asks useful questions that increasingly inform improvement priorities and resourcing decisions. 

Part B: Where to next?

The agreed next steps for the school are to: 

• continue professional learning in structured literacy so that all teachers have a shared understanding of high quality practice to develop coherence and consistency across the school
• develop and implement a plan to improve attendance, and include this within strategic planning 
• evaluate the recently implemented English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) programme and monitor its effectiveness for English language learning 
• intentionally respond to student engagement, wellbeing and learning data to support improved learner outcomes.

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

Within three months:

• identify target learners and plan specific actions to accelerate their achievement
• gather and analyse student attendance, engagement and wellbeing information to inform planning
• engage with parents and whānau to gather their ideas to develop a plan to improve attendance
• develop school-wide expectations for assessment and teaching practices for reading, writing and mathematics to ensure coherence and consistency across the school to support learner outcomes

Every six months:

• undertake planned observations of teaching practices for reading, writing and mathematics to ensure coherence and consistency across the school to support learner outcome
• continue to analyse and report to the board on the progress and achievement of all students, including target learners, in reading, writing and mathematics
• report to the board on the progress of English language learners and the effectiveness of the support provided to them
• review the effectiveness of strategies to improve regular attendance

Annually:

• analyse, evaluate and report to the board on the progress and achievement of all students in reading, writing and mathematics to inform planning
• evaluate the impact of actions take to accelerate the achievement of target learners
• evaluate the English language learning programme and monitor its effectiveness for learners to inform programme refinement 
• gather, analyse and respond to student engagement, wellbeing, attendance and learning information.

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

• improved learner outcomes with reduced disparity between groups of learners
• implementation of school-wide learning progressions, assessments and expectations in reading, writing and mathematics and consistent, coherent teaching for all learners
• more learners attending school regularly.

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

6 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