Five Forks 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

Five Forks School is a small rural school for students in Years 1 to 8, located in North Otago. Students learn together in three multi-level classes. The school’s vision is to support all students to feel valued and grow into respectful, responsible and reflective life-long learners.

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

• Information for the past three years shows nearly all students achieve at expected curriculum levels in reading and mathematics and most achieve at curriculum expectations in writing; inequity in boys’ achievement in writing has reduced over time and there is a continued focus on improving all students’ progress and achievement in writing.
•  Students are increasingly able to reflect on their learning and progress and identify their next learning steps.
• A majority of learners attend school regularly, but not yet at levels recommended by the Ministry of Education. Leaders and teachers work with families to encourage regular attendance and to ameliorate the impact of absence on achievement.

Conditions to support learner success

• Leadership ensures the school’s curriculum and teaching are well planned, coordinated and regularly evaluated; expectations for high-quality, evidence-informed teaching are clear and shared.
• To achieve the school’s strategic vision and improvement goals, governance and leadership builds and sustains high levels of relational trust and effective collaboration at every level of the school community.
• Professional learning opportunities for teachers are strategically aligned with the school’s improvement goals and students’ needs.

• Students have relevant, authentic opportunities to learn across the breadth of The New Zealand Curriculum and in contexts that reflect their lives, identities and local community.
• Learning strategies that enable students to develop their capability to reflect on and direct their own learning and behaviour, are being increasingly used; teachers engage students in learning through questioning, increasing exposures to concepts, ideas, skills and examples, along with timely and specific feedback.
• Students needing additional support are identified promptly and are provided with relevant, individualised and effective support to learn and progress at an appropriate pace.

• A comprehensive range of policies, programmes and practices foster students’ physical and emotional safety and wellbeing; relationships between staff and students are founded on mutual trust and allow students to seek help when required.
• The board, leaders and teachers actively facilitate parent, whānau and community engagement and participation in the life of the school, contribution to decision-making and knowledge of and support for their children’s learning.
• Leaders and teachers use relevant internal and external expertise, including networking with other schools, to support capability building, improvement and innovation.
• The board effectively manages and strategically plans for the school’s financial, property and human resourcing and holds leadership accountable for the performance of the school through scrutinising evidence of student engagement, progress and achievement.

Part B: Where to next?

The agreed next step for the school is to: 

• extend and embed consistent practices for teaching literacy, lifelong learning strategies and the school’s bicultural curriculum including opportunities to learn te reo, tikanga and mātauranga Māori.

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

Within six months

• implementation planning and professional learning for teachers on the school’s structured literacy programme
• confirmation of the school’s learning strategies in consultation with students, families and staff and developing systems for tracking students’ growing capabilities
• short and long term planning for the school’s bicultural curriculum.

Annually, monitoring and evaluating

• literacy teaching and learning to ensure practices are implemented as intended, aligned with national curriculum expectations and guidelines, and supporting appropriate progress and achievement for students
• students have regular, consistent opportunities to develop and demonstrate the school’s learning strategies and demonstrate growing capabilities
• meaningful incorporation of te reo, tikanga and mātauranga Māori across the curriculum in all classes.

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

• sustained and improved student achievement in literacy, particularly in writing
• students becoming increasingly reflective, self-regulated and self-directed learners
• students growing in their knowledge and understanding of te reo and tikanga Māori and of New Zealand’s bicultural heritage.

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

12 June 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