East Taieri School

Te Ara Huarau | School Profile Report

Background

This Profile Report was written within 6 months of the Education Review Office and East Taieri 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 

East Taieri School is a primary school for children in Years 1-6, located in East Taieri. The school’s vision for learners is that they will be: empowered to create a pathway to personal success; inspired to be creative, learn collaboratively, problem-solve and communicate effectively; and that they will care for themselves, others and the environment.

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

• enhancing student hauora|wellbeing

• continued development of a responsive, localised curriculum

• collaborative teaching that fosters the school’s learner qualities of being resilient and a thinker, self-manager, communicator and collaborator

• raising student achievement in literacy, particularly in writing for boys and oral language for junior students

• developing a balanced mathematical programme that fosters problem-solving skills and mathematical dispositions and raises student achievement

• strengthening te reo, tikanga and mātauranga Māori across the school.

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

ERO and the school are working together to evaluate how well the school’s recently reviewed curriculum and collaborative teaching practices are supporting all students to develop the school’s learner qualities and to make progress and achieve success in learning.

The rationale for selecting this evaluation is:

• school information shows that over time a lower proportion of boys have achieved at the school’s expected curriculum levels in literacy than girls

• the school wants to know the impact of recent changes to the teaching of literacy and numeracy on student learning outcomes.

The school expects to see:

• an increasing proportion of boys achieve at expected curriculum levels in literacy

• students, in general, continue to make appropriate progress and achieve at expected levels in literacy and numeracy

• students having sufficient and meaningful opportunities to participate in tikanga Māori, learn about mātauranga Māori and make progress in te reo Māori learning

• students developing the school’s learner qualities and demonstrating these in the way they manage their learning.

Strengths

The school can draw from the following strengths to support the school in its goal to improve student achievement through responsive curriculum and quality teaching:

• effective school leadership that ensures effective curriculum planning and implementation

• leaders and teachers have purposefully built their capability to implement culturally responsive curriculum and teaching

• existing curriculum and teaching practice that responds well to the diverse interests, needs and abilities of students

• leaders and teachers who are improvement focused and use internal evaluation well to know about the effectiveness of teaching and learning.

Where to next?

Moving forward, the school will prioritise:

• ongoing curriculum development guided by the New Zealand Curriculum refresh and the school’s vision for learners

• professional development support for teachers to implement curriculum change, embed new assessment practice and continue to build culturally responsive practice

• engagement with parents and whānau to ensure they are well informed about the school’s curriculum, teaching and learning practices, assessment of students’ learning and how they can support learning at home

• internal evaluation clearly focused on monitoring the impact of curriculum and teaching practice on student learning 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 of Schools

13 September 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