Lumsden School

Te Ara Huarau | School Profile Report

Background

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

Lumsden School is a semi-rural school in Northern Southland providing education for students in multilevel classes from Years 1 to 6. Students from a wide geographic area attend the school. Students come from a range of cultural backgrounds including those for whom English is a second language. A new principal was appointed and began in 2022.

Lumsden School’s strategic priorities for improving outcomes for learners are:

• for all students to be fully engaged in their learning
• to maintain students’ current high achievement levels in reading and mathematics and to raise writing achievement levels.

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

ERO and the school are working together to build evaluation practice to determine the impact of ‘Structured Literacy’ on students’ writing.  

The rationale for selecting this evaluation is:

• the school is embarking on using the ‘Structured Literacy’ approach and needs to be evaluating the impact of this in an ongoing way
• to build consistent high quality evaluation practice across the school.

The school expects to see teachers and the board using a shared approach to evaluation, students fully engaged in their learning and student achievement in writing improved.

Strengths

The school can draw from the following strengths to support it in its goal to support all students to progress and achieve their highest educational potential.

• Staff who are motivated and open to new learning and purposeful change in order to improve outcomes for students aligned with the school’s values of "Being kind and Doing our best".
• The strong professional leadership of teaching and learning.
• The board and staff are committed to the successful implementation of the ‘Structured Literacy’ approach.
• Community engagement and support for the school.

Where to next?

Moving forward, the school will prioritise:

• embedding the ‘Structured Literacy’ approach across the whole school
• aligning school resourcing to support student achievement and wellbeing.

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.

Dr Lesley Patterson
Director Review and Improvement Services (Southern)
Southern Region | Te Tai Tini

15 August 2022 

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