Message to all schools from the Chief Review Officer

Date: 26/06/2012

Tēnā koutou

Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou.

During Term 2 ERO has published several national evaluation reports of interest to schools. These reports are all available on our website and I encourage you to spend some time reading them and sharing the information with your staff.

• Working with the National Standards: Good Practice. This report uses information gathered during 2011 to highlight the best examples of good practice in schools working well with National Standards.
• Working with the National Standards to Promote Students’ Progress and Achievement. This is the fourth update report in an ongoing series of evaluations over three years about schools’ implementation of the National Standards.
• Improving Education Outcomes for Pacific Learners looks at how primary and secondary schools engage with Pacific learners and work to lift their achievement. The report includes several recommendations for school leaders in both primary and secondary schools.
• Science in the New Zealand Curriculum: Years 5 to 8 has recommendations for the Teachers Council, the Ministry of Education and for schools, including that schools review the quality of science teaching and learning using the indicators in ERO’s good practice report from 2010. This earlier report, Science in Years 5 to 8: Capable and Confident Teaching, provided examples of high quality teaching and management practices for science education, self-review questions and indicators of good practice. Both reports are available on our website.
• Readiness to Implement Te Marautanga o Aotearoa and Ngā Whanaketanga Rumaki Māori: This report is the first in a series of national reports we will publish over the next two years on this topic. The findings are based on kura and schools reviewed in both 2010 and 2011. Included in the report are examples of good practice.

In response to feedback, we are now preparing ‘digests’ for some of our reports. With this new approach we are endeavouring to make the reports more accessible for a wider audience. We want to work with schools to get system change and we see greater uptake of the national reports as a positive way to help achieve this. A digest of the Pacific Learners report is being mailed to all schools soon. For primary schools we have also prepared a leaflet on transitions for children from early childhood services to schools. It highlights material originally produced for the early childhood sector, covering topics which are also of interest to primary schools. Copies will be posted out shortly. We encourage you to read it and request copies of the reports it refers to or read them online.

All our reports are available to download through our website at www.ero.govt.nz. We don’t print hard copies of every report, as part of our commitment to keeping costs down and being environmentally friendly.

Coming up next term we plan to publish reports on a range of topics including – curriculum principles, teaching as inquiry, careers education, international students, Māori success (the trial schools), Ako Panuku (a programme for Maori teachers in secondary schools), including students with special needs (Part 2), and literacy and mathematics achievement in Years 9 and 10. We will let you know when these are released.

At the beginning of each term we publish the list of National Evaluation Topics (NETs) on our website.

Market research underway

You will be interested to know that we have recently commissioned some market research into how parents view the new school review report format introduced last year. The research comprises a number of focus groups with parents, with the aim of evaluating whether the new format of our review reports is meeting parents’ needs, so we can make any changes required. This work is part of ERO’s overall programme of continuous improvement.

Meetings with groups

We greatly value our interactions with school groups including boards of trustees, school staff and others. If you would like to meet with us, please send us an invitation and we will find a time to suit. Throughout the year we also meet with national education sector groups through a programme of liaison meetings at which we informally discuss a wide range of topics.

Best wishes for the school holidays.

Nāku noa, nā

Graham Stoop

Chief Review Officer