John Paul College

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 

John Paul College is a state-integrated Catholic school located in Rotorua. It provides education for students from Year 7 to 13. Since the 2022 ERO report, a new principal has started and there have been new appointments to the senior leadership team. The board has also restructured to enable permanent tangata whenua representation.

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 June 2022, ERO and the school have worked together to evaluate how effectively the school is supporting equitable and excellent outcomes for Māori students through culturally inclusive conditions for learning.

Expected Improvements and Findings

The school expected to see:

Māori students achieving at comparable levels to their non-Māori peers in the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) endorsement and University Entrance (UE).

• Two thirds of Year 13 Māori students gained UE in 2023; UE outcomes for Māori have become more equitable over time. 
• At least one third of Māori students at all levels of NCEA gained certificate endorsements in 2023. This remains a lower proportion of excellent outcomes than their peers.

Increased Māori participation in STEM subjects.

• Most Māori students in the senior school study at least one STEM subject.

The greatest shift that occurred in response to the school’s action has been an increased strategic commitment to improving Māori students’ pathways and opportunities at John Paul College.

Part B: Current State

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

Learner Success and Wellbeing 

• Almost all students achieve in NCEA Levels 1 to 3, including a high proportion of Merit and Excellence endorsements.
• NCEA outcomes are equitable for all students, including Māori.
• The large majority of students achieve University Entrance; disparity for Māori is decreasing.
• The school is not yet meeting the Ministry of Education attendance targets; just over half of students attend school regularly.

Conditions to support learner success

• Leadership articulates a vision for increasing Māori students’ sense of belonging and develops and implements action plans to strengthen bicultural practices in the school.
• Leaders regularly review aspects of the school’s curriculum and teaching practices to identify improvement areas in relation to enhancing student wellbeing and learning outcomes.
• Leaders have clearly defined roles and responsibilities; a next step is to increase the ways all levels of leadership collaborate and work collectively across the school to progress the college’s strategic improvement goals.

• Students experience learning opportunities that increasingly acknowledge and reflect the local area and bicultural contexts; this remains an area for further development.
• Clearly established routines and respectful relationships among teachers and students contribute to settled, learning-focused classrooms.
• Students benefit from well-resourced learning environments and a broad curriculum that provide a rich variety of academic and co-curricular pathways.

• School governance and senior leadership structures have been reviewed and strengthened to provide increased representation of tangata whenua and leadership in te ao Māori.
• Leaders are identifying and responding to the professional development needs of staff, aligned to the school’s strategic improvement goals.
• Leaders and teachers regularly engage with NCEA achievement data; however, there is a need to develop a consistent approach to junior assessment practices, along with improving the use of schoolwide progress and achievement data to inform teaching and learning and to evaluate the impact of improvement actions. 
• The school is increasingly engaging with students, whānau, parents and the wider community to identify improvement priorities, particularly in relation to student wellbeing and belonging.

Part C: Where to next? 

The agreed next steps for the school are to: 

• increase the rates of regular attendance for all learners
• continue to increase teachers’ confidence and capability to integrate te ao and mātauranga Māori into the curriculum and classroom teaching practices
• strengthen the consistency of assessment data collection and use in Years 7 to 10
• build schoolwide leadership capability and capacity to support coherent and sustainable processes and practices, particularly in relation to continuing to strengthen consistent and effective teaching practices and building a bicultural learning environment.

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

Within six months:

• develop a schoolwide process to track and monitor junior student achievement (Years 7 to 10), using agreed language and methods to assess and record students’ progress
• provide a clear articulation of what effective teaching and learning looks like at John Paul College, including expectations for culturally responsive practice and deliberate acts of teaching. 

Every six months:

• monitor attendance data for all students and adjust improvement interventions as required 
• at faculty level, review and report on the extent to which te ao and mātauranga Māori is integrated in the curriculum and teaching practice, and provide targeted professional learning to strengthen teachers’ confidence and capability in this area
• collect and analyse feedback from students in relation to their learning experiences, and use the information to inform further improvements to the school’s curriculum and teaching practices.

Annually:

• report on the annual and over time outcomes for Māori students, including a focus on their sense of belonging at John Paul College
• use internal evaluation findings to identify areas for further improvement in the school’s curriculum and in teaching practices.

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

• improved rates of regular student attendance
• increased consistency of teaching practices to further support and extend students’ progress and achievement
• further strengthening Māori students’ sense of belonging through a school curriculum that increasingly reflects New Zealand’s bicultural heritage
• increased schoolwide leadership capacity to monitor and evaluate the impact of improvement initiatives, and to sustain positive outcomes for all learners.

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

6 September 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