Stirling School

Te Ara Huarau | School Profile Report

Background

This Profile Report was written within 12 months of the Education Review Office and Stirling 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 

Stirling School is a small, rural primary school in South Otago, near Balclutha. It provides education for students from Years 1 – 8. The school’s mission is to provide a stimulating learning environment where all students build self-belief and courage, so that they can experience success as individuals.

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

• implement Positive Behaviour for Learning (PB4L) to minimise behavioural issues to enable a greater focus on teaching and learning
• adopt a structured literacy approach to enhance literacy learning outcomes for all students, especially those not yet meeting achievement expectations in reading and writing.

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

ERO and the school are working together to evaluate how effectively the structured literacy approach is improving reading and writing outcomes for all students, with a particular focus on the progress of students not yet meeting achievement expectations. 

The rationale for selecting this evaluation is:

• leaders have identified an aspiration to develop a cohesive literacy curriculum that is more responsive to the learning needs of all students
• the school is part of the Big River Kāhui Ako, which has chosen to adopt the IDEAL platform for structured literacy across the network of schools.

The school expects to see:

• teachers continuing to reflect and refine their teaching practices in response to learners’ needs and their growing knowledge of structured literacy
• improved reading and writing outcomes for all students, especially those students not yet meeting achievement expectations.

Strengths

The school can draw from the following strengths to support the school in its goal to evaluate how effectively the structured literacy approach is improving reading and writing outcomes for all students:

• Teachers are open to new ways of working and have personal learning goals that are based around adapting their practice to accommodate the structured literacy approach.
• The school is working well with the kāhui ako to drive improvements to the curriculum, including upskilling teachers in effective strategies for literacy teaching and assessment for learning.

Where to next?

Moving forward, the school will prioritise:

• professional learning for leaders and teachers to understand and make effective use of students’ progress and achievement information in literacy to purposefully plan for and monitor improving outcomes for students
• developing and documenting a shared understanding of effective teaching strategies to provide clarity and guidance for teachers to ensure a responsive literacy curriculum
• communicating with the community to ensure the school’s new approach to literacy learning is well understood by whānau, to strengthen and inform their engagement with the learning process and increase support for students’ literacy learning at home.

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 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