Preparing to Give Effect to the New Zealand Curriculum (June 2010) 01/06/2010

Appendix 1: Methodology

Primary and secondary schools with an education review in Terms 3 and 4, 2009, were evaluated on their progress, including:

• activities undertaken to reflect local contexts in their vision, values and statements about learning;

• the extent to which school leaders were organising learning and teaching to give effect to The New Zealand Curriculum;

• the extent to which teacher actions promoted student learning in the school;

• what teachers were doing particularly well;

• the biggest challenges facing the school; and

• how well the school had progressed overall towards giving full effect to The New Zealand Curriculum.

As with ERO’s two previous reports on schools’ readiness to implement The New Zealand Curriculum, evidence gathered in the schools was collated and analysed on a national basis. Both quantitative and qualitative information was included.

In each school, ERO made an overall judgement on how well preparations for implementation had progressed. This information was used to present a national overview of schools’ readiness to give full effect to The New Zealand Curriculum.

The evaluation had two overarching questions:

• To what extent are schools organising learning and teaching to give effect to The New Zealand Curriculum?

• To what extent do teacher actions promote student learning?

ERO developed indicators based on The New Zealand Curriculum and the Ministry of Education’s Best Evidence Syntheses. These were used by reviewers to assist them with their judgement. These are shown in Appendix 3.

Appendix 2 shows statistics of the schools in the sample for this evaluation: type, size, decile and locality.

The synthesis sheet used by reviewers in schools is included as Appendix 4 of this report.