Kaikorai 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 

Kaikorai School is situated in the hill suburbs of Dunedin. They provide education for students in Years 1 to 6. A complete school rebuild has recently been completed. Their mission statement is: To provide an environment in which children continue to develop a love of learning and respect for others. 

There are three parts to this report.

Part A: A summary of the findings from the most recent Education Review Office (ERO) report and/or subsequent evaluation. 

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

Part A: Previous Improvement Goals 

Since the previous report in April 2023, ERO and the school have been working together to evaluate how effectively project-based learning enabled students to use future focused skills and attitudes to enrich learning experiences and improve academic achievement.   

Expected Improvements and Findings 

The school expected to see:

Parents actively supporting their children’s learning and engaging in the life of the school.

• Parent and whānau aspirations are now embedded in the school’s strategic planning and enacted in the curriculum.
• Leaders and teachers facilitate regular parent and whānau engagement and meaningful participation in the life of the school; including increased input into curriculum design processes and sharing progress and achievement information.

Leaders and teachers enhancing the curriculum model to achieve excellent and equitable outcomes for students.  

• Useful rubrics provide clarity for all stakeholders; resulting in a shared language of learning across the school and increasingly cohesive teaching practices.
• Teachers make judgments about learner progress and achievement in relation to the rubrics and increasingly use these judgments to identify next steps for learners and inform future curriculum planning.
• Leaders make use of internal and external expertise, including networking with other schools, to support capability building, improvement and innovation. 

Strengthened future focused skills through an innovative and coherent local curriculum, provides authentic contexts for rich, meaningful, hands-on learning experiences.

• Local curriculum contexts build on learners’ experiences, knowledge and understanding.
• The school’s teaching and learning resources increasingly support coherent and effective curriculum implementation and classroom teaching.
• Leaders are developing tools to help them make sense of schoolwide future focused skills data to capture learnings and inform future planning.

Other Findings 

The greatest shift that occurred in response to the school’s action was improved clarity for teachers about how to assess ‘future focused skills’. Teachers use rubrics to assess with increasing accuracy and purpose and share this information with parents and whānau. 

Part B: Current State 

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

Learner Success and Wellbeing 

Most students are engaged, making progress and achieve well; there is increasing equity between groups of learners.

• Most students achieve curriculum expectations in reading, writing and mathematics.
• Outcomes are increasingly equitable, particularly for Māori learners in reading; the school continues to prioritise equitable outcomes for Pacific learners, for boys in reading and writing and for Māori in writing.
• The large majority of students attend school regularly; a well-considered approach is improving attendance rates; however, the school is not yet meeting the Ministry of Education target.

Conditions to support learner success

Leadership fosters a culture of professional collaboration that focuses on improving outcomes for learners.

• Leaders are strengthening effective collaboration at every level of the school community to achieve the strategic vision and improvement goals.
• Curriculum leadership supports teachers’ professional understanding and use of teaching resources and tools; this is building consistency of teaching practice schoolwide.
• Expectations for high-quality teaching are clear, shared and monitored so that learners experience well designed programmes that meet their learning needs.

Learners benefit from a coherent curriculum design that engages them in a range of meaningful learning experiences.

• Learners have rich opportunities to learn across the breadth and depth of the curriculum; this extends their interest and engagement.
• Teachers enact a consistent approach to supporting learners so that they gain sound foundational skills, including literacy, communication, mathematics and future focused skills and attitudes.
• Teachers regularly work collectively in planned ways to inquire into targeted aspects of their teaching practice to support learner progress and achievement.

Key conditions to support ongoing improvement underpin successful schooling. 

• Leaders and teachers recognise, value and cater for a wide range of languages, cultures and identities of learners, parents, whānau and the community; this further strengthens learners' strong sense of belonging.
• The school implements a comprehensive range of policies, programmes and practices that promote and improve learners’ wellbeing, inclusion and engagement in learning.
• Evaluation capability is growing across the school; leaders continue to embed this practice so that strategic planning and schoolwide decision making are well informed.
• Te reo Māori and tikanga Māori are increasingly woven through all aspects of the school’s curriculum.

Part C: Where to next? 

The agreed next steps for the school are to: 

• deepen teachers’ and leaders’ knowledge and understanding of effective strategies that improve attendance and equitable outcomes for groups of learners 
• strengthen schoolwide evaluation of programmes and interventions to highlight what is working well and for who and refine teaching practice and strategies accordingly
• extend leaders use of attendance, achievement and learning information in schoolwide analysis and sense making to inform ongoing improvements in curriculum and teaching practice over time.

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

Every six months:

• monitor the progress of priority groups of students and identify modifications to programmes and initiatives to improve learning outcomes
• review the impact of the attendance strategy and explore further strategies to lift attendance rates.

Annually:

• review and report to the board the success of interventions and programmes that have improved achievement, engagement and attendance for groups of learners and identify priorities for ongoing improvement
• evaluate the impact of professional learning on improving equitable outcomes for all learners to identify next steps for teaching and learning.

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

• more students attending regularly
• sustained and improved high levels of achievement in reading, writing and mathematics for all groups of learners
• meaningful evaluation over time that informs high quality teaching and learning.

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

4 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