Southland Adventist Christian School

Te Ara Huarau | School Profile Report

Background

This Profile Report was written within 9 months of the Education Review Office and Southland Adventist Christian 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 

Southland Adventist Christian School is a state integrated, Christian school for children in years 0 – 8. It is located in Waikiwi, a northern suburb of Invercargill. The school’s mission is: growing – for eternity.

The school’s strategic priorities for improving outcomes for learners are to:

• ensure high levels of staff performance and student achievement through implementation of self-review, targeted professional development and professional growth cycles
• plan for future growth and development of Southland Adventist Christian School
• develop strategies to help students learn skills which enable them to create and maintain positive relationships with others and grow physically and emotionally
• create a movement of students who know, live and serve Jesus.

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

ERO and the school are working together to evaluate how well assessment information is being used to inform teaching, accelerate progress rates in literacy and numeracy and improve parity for groups of learners.

The rationale for selecting this evaluation is the school has been working with external professional learning and development providers to grow the collective capacity of leaders, teachers and students to make effective use of assessment information. A new assessment plan has been recently adopted. The school is embedding new systems and processes so that their effectiveness can be evaluated.

The school expects to see increasingly cohesive assessment practices and high-quality analysis deliver excellent and equitable outcomes for all learners.

Strengths

The school can draw from the following strengths to support it in its goal to evaluate how well assessment information is being used to inform teaching, accelerate progress rates in literacy and numeracy and improve parity for groups of learners:

• Training has been provided to support teachers’ use of newly adopted assessment tools, which is supporting a cohesive approach to assessment.
• The school’s revised plan has streamlined assessment processes across the school and is beginning to inform programmes for learning.
• Learners are well known by teachers, who identify priority groups of students and monitor their progress closely.

Where to next?

Moving forward, the school will prioritise:

• continuing to build capability in the collection, use and analysis of high-quality assessment information across the school
• evaluating the impact of student support programmes and interventions to better understand what is working well and what is not.

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

19 June 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