Macandrew Bay School

Te Ara Huarau | School Profile Report

Background

This Profile Report was written within six months of the Education Review Office and Macandrew Bay 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 

Macandrew Bay School is located on the Otago Harbour near Dunedin and provides education for learners from Years 1 to 6. The school’s mission statement is, ‘simply the best for our children’.

Macandrew Bay School’s strategic priorities for improving outcomes for learners are to:

• provide learners with a broad curriculum that is engaging, motivating, fosters creativity, balance, wellbeing and a lifelong passion for learning

• ensure all learners experience learning success and are supported to achieve their personal best, particularly with foundation skills including language, literacy and numeracy

• provide a safe, stimulating learning environment that fosters a sense of belonging, connection to the school and peninsula community and that celebrates cultural diversity

• develop a strong learning community, where everyone works well together, actively participating and contributing to the life of the school.

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

ERO and the school are working together to evaluate the impact of a localised writing curriculum on the progress of all learners and in particular target learners.

The rationale for selecting this evaluation is:

• writing achievement information has indicated that the school needs to develop ways to gather and respond to data in order to ensure the progress and acceleration of its target learners

• a goal to extend teachers’ evaluation practices and understanding to ensure consistency across the school that it is fair and equitable for all learners

• to sustain a focus on strengthening home-school partnerships for increased participation and contribution by whānau and parents for the benefit of learners.

The school expects to see:

• the development of a writing programme that enables all learners to access a broad curriculum through strong foundational literacy skills and knowledge

• moderation practices further developing teacher practice in making assessment judgements

• the effectiveness of a localised writing curriculum in supporting all students to progress and achieve in their learning.

Strengths

The school can draw from the following strengths to support its goal to evaluate the impact of a localised writing curriculum on the progress of all learners and in particular target learners:

• a community-school partnership that supports learning and wellbeing

• a robust approach to structured literacy teaching that is applied in a consistent way schoolwide

• regular use of achievement information by school leaders to prioritise next steps

• the collaborative way in which staff work together to support learners and their whānau.

Where to next?

Moving forward, the school will prioritise:

• strengthening teaching, learning and assessment practices in writing to improve achievement levels for all learners

• developing a framework of expectations and success indicators for progress in writing to better reflect on and inform next teaching and learning steps

• designing a sustainable model for ongoing support for identified groups of learners not yet making expected progress.

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

1 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