Craighead Diocesan School

Te Ara Huarau | School Profile Report

Background

This Profile Report was written within 2 years of the Education Review Office and Craighead Diocesan 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 

Craighead Diocesan School is a state-integrated Anglican school for girls in Years 7 to 13 located in Timaru, South Canterbury. About one third of students come from outside Timaru and are accommodated as boarders in the school’s co-located boarding hostel. The school’s vision for learners is that they become confident, resilient and courageous contributors to a dynamic world.

The school’s strategic priorities for improving outcomes for learners are:

• ensuring the special character, cultures, languages, identities and wellbeing of all students are valued and visible in the everyday life of the school
• developing a coherent, challenging, future-focused curriculum which is responsive to the needs, interests and lives of learners
• fostering a strong sense of connection across the school community through wellbeing initiatives, collaboration with regional schools and partnerships with local iwi.

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

ERO and the school are working together to evaluate how well junior curriculum, effective teaching and opportunity to learn are supporting Year 7 to 9 students to make sufficient progress and achieve in literacy.

The rationale for selecting this evaluation is:

• literacy is a key competency for accessing and having success in the senior curriculum and national qualifications
• school data shows that about 20% of students are entering school achieving below expectations for reading
• the need to respond to the current review of the New Zealand Curriculum and introduction of new National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) literacy and numeracy requirements.

The school expects to see:

• all students make sufficient progress and achieve success in literacy - particularly those students who enter school not yet achieving at expected levels
• students understand and value the importance of literacy and have growing confidence in their literacy competencies across learning areas.

Strengths

The school can draw from the following strengths to support it to improve junior students’ literacy learning:

• curriculum and learning support leadership and resourcing focused on promoting effective teaching practice and improving student learning outcomes
• strengthened systems and practices for identifying and responding to all students’ literacy learning needs on the basis of quality assessment information
• positive learning culture characterised by caring, respectful partnerships between teachers and students, teachers and families and between students.

Where to next?

Moving forward, the school will prioritise:

• embedding systems and practices for collecting and sharing good quality information on student literacy learning needs
• support for teachers to implement a range of evidence-based practices to support literacy learning across the curriculum and for diverse learners
• curriculum development that provides relevant, inclusive and sufficient opportunities for all students to learn, practice and develop their literacy competencies.

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

10 August 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