Renwick School

Renwick School

Te Ara Huarau | School Profile Report

Background

This Profile Report was written within twelve months of the Education Review Office and Renwick 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 

Renwick School is located in Renwick, in Marlborough. It provides education for students in Years 1 to 8. The school has a satellite kura, Te Pā Wānanga, based at Omaka Marae that provides kaupapa Māori learning. It is also the base for the RTLB cluster 31 and is a member of the Piritahi Kāhui Ako.

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

  • Strengthening teacher/leadership capabilities

  • Hauora with a focus on attendance

  • Educationally powerful connections and relationships with the school’s community and local Māori

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

ERO and the school are working together to evaluate how effectively the school’s developing vision and values are known, embedded and reflected across school practices.

The rationale for selecting this evaluation is to ensure the new vision and values:

  • reflect the students, their whānau and wider community to ensure relevant and authentic learning

  • align with the revised New Zealand Curriculum and the school’s localised curriculum

  • are well understood by all stakeholders and enacted across school practices to provide consistency in teaching and learning.

The school expects to see the vision and values visible in all aspects of school culture. Students will know and demonstrate the values, and these will be reflected within the school’s curriculum.

Strengths

The school can draw from the following strengths to support its goal to know how effectively the school’s developing vision and values are known, embedded and reflected across school practices:

  • Collaborative team culture that supports and utilises staff capability and capacity to build consistent practice.

  • Strong community connections with shared commitment to enhance engagement to support student attendance and learning.

  • Capable leadership that has a clear strategic direction to improve outcomes for learners.

Where to next?

Moving forward, the school will prioritise:

  • align and embed the school’s vision, values and the localised curriculum to ensure it well understood and enacted across the school

  • supporting teachers to have a shared understanding of the vision, values and curriculum to enable them to be active participants to support students’ learning and development.

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.

Kathy Lye
Acting Director Review and Improvement (Southern)
Southern Region | Te Tai Tini

6 April 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

Renwick School

Board Assurance with Regulatory and Legislative Requirements Report 2022 to 2025

As of April 2022, the Renwick School, School Board has attested to the following regulatory and legislative requirements:

Board Administration

Yes

Curriculum

Yes

Management of Health, Safety and Welfare

Yes

Personnel Management

Yes

Finance

Yes

Assets

Yes

Further Information

For further information please contact Renwick School, School Board.

The next School Board assurance that it is meeting regulatory and legislative requirements will be reported, along with the Te Ara Huarau | School Evaluation Report, within three years.

Information on ERO’s role and process in this review can be found on the Education Review Office website.

Kathy Lye
Acting Director Review and Improvement (Southern)

Southern Region | Te Tai Tini

6 April 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

Renwick School

Provision for International Students Report

Background

The Education Review Office reviews schools that are signatories to the Education (Pastoral Care of Tertiary and International Learners) Code of Practice 2021 established under section 534 of the Education and Training Act 2020.

Findings

Renwick School has attested that it complies with all aspects of the Code.    

At the time of this review there were no international students attending the school and no exchange students.    

The school has detailed policies and procedures that provide clear guidelines and practices to support international students' wellbeing and learning. While there is detailed information about the school on the school’s website, there is yet to be any information added that relates specifically to International Students. This is something the school will address as the need arises.

Kathy Lye
Acting Director Review and Improvement (Southern)
Southern Region | Te Tai Tini

6 April 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

Renwick School - 14/07/2017

Summary

At the time of this review, the Renwick School roll was 535 including 77 Māori children.

Overall the school has maintained very good to high levels of student achievement against the National Standards in reading, writing and mathematics from 2009-2016. Since the 2012 ERO review there has been continuous improvement of the school’s effective systems and practices for leadership, assessing and monitoring of student achievement, the curriculum and wellbeing. Significant focus has been given to integrating te reo and tikanga Māori into the curriculum and improving Māori achievement.

Staffing has remained stable with many long-serving leaders and teachers. The board has a mix of experienced and recently-elected trustees.

The school is a member of the Piritahi Kāhui Ako (Community of Learning) and the principal is a co-leader.

How well is the school achieving equitable outcomes for all children?

The school is strongly focused on providing equitable outcomes for all children, particularly those groups of children whose achievement needs acceleration.

The school has many effective systems, processes and practices that are enabling achievement of equity and excellence. Of particular significance is the leadership of the school and the well-considered strategic direction. The school has very effective systems and processes to achieve its vision for high quality learning and teaching for all children.

Internal evaluation is very well used to refine and improve school operations. Trustees, leaders and staff strongly promote a bicultural learning environment that will benefit Māori and all children. The school has established strong learning partnerships with children and their families.

Participation in the Piritahi Kāhui Ako is having a significant and positive impact on the school achieving its vision for student achievement and high quality learning and teaching.

The school needs to further evaluate the outcomes and impact of programmes and initiatives, particularly in relation to Māori succeeding as Māori.

Children are achieving very good educational outcomes. School performance has been sustained over time through well-focused, embedded processes and practices. This school has continued to improve the way it is addressing in-school disparity in educational outcomes.

ERO is likely to carry out the next review in four-to-five years.

Equity and excellence

How effectively does this school respond to Māori and other children whose learning and achievement need acceleration?

The school responds very effectively to Māori and other children whose learning and achievement need acceleration.

The majority of children achieve very well in reading, writing and mathematics. Boys are achieving less well, particularly in writing.

There is a small disparity in the National Standards achievement of Māori children.

The school makes very good use of internal evaluation to refine its effective systems and practices for responding to children whose achievement needs to be accelerated. Teachers have an in depth knowledge of each child. They successfully use this information to provide programmes to engage children whose achievement needs to be accelerated. These children are targeted through well-defined, specific teaching approaches that incorporate their interests and make learning relevant.

Children’s progress and wellbeing are closely monitored and reported by a group of teachers (whānau group). Teachers collaboratively identify approaches which are most effective and make changes to their teaching as needed, usually in consultation with the child.

The school has effective assessment and moderation processes. This year teachers are beginning to use a national moderation tool to further strengthen their judgements. They are also working with colleagues from other schools in the Piritahi Kāhui Ako to improve consistency across the schools.

School conditions supporting equity and excellence

What school processes are effective in enabling achievement of equity and excellence?

The school has effective high quality processes to support equity and excellence.

Children and parents are valued and respected as partners in learning. Leaders and teachers use a range of appropriate and effective strategies to communicate with parents and whānau. They provide many opportunities for parents to provide feedback on their child's learning. Children are regularly consulted about their learning. Children provide very specific feedback to teachers on the best ways that they can help them learn and experience success. Learning is shared and well supported by teachers, children and whānau.

The school's curriculum is highly responsive to children's needs, interests and abilities. Children have an in depth knowledge of what they are learning and what they want to achieve. They are actively involved in decision making for what and how they learn. Teachers effectively take collective responsibility for the learning and wellbeing of all children in their whānau group.

Transition into school is well planned and successfully utilizes children’s prior knowledge and ways they have learnt through play in their early childhood centre. Children are highly engaged and confident that they will succeed in their learning.

Te reo and tikanga Māori are becoming well integrated into all aspects of school life. Māori values are well understood and integrated. Whānau groupings are used well to promote the ways that Māori children learn best. Teachers are making good progress in integrating te reo and tikanga Māori into all aspects of the curriculum. Leaders provide teachers with ongoing, high quality professional development. Effective, culturally responsive teaching strategies support and promote student learning.

Leaders have a highly strategic and coherent approach to building professional capability and collective capacity. Systematic, collaborative inquiry processes and challenging professional learning opportunities are well aligned to achieve the school vision, values, goals and targets.

Leaders, trustees and teachers share high expectations for children’s learning, progress and wellbeing. The school’s well focused approach to professional learning and robust systems to evaluate current practices are improving the quality of teaching and learning for all children.

School leadership provides highly focused strategic direction to ensure all children experience equity and excellence in their learning and wellbeing. All teachers are viewed as successful, effective leaders. Their strengths are valued and well used.

The strategic plan effectively guides teaching and learning to improve outcomes for all children and particularly children who need their achievement accelerated. The plan’s implementation is closely monitored and adapted as needed to get the best results for children. Leaders and teachers skillfully identify what has achieved the best outcomes and what needs to be done next.

Involvement in the Piritahi Kāhui Ako is a catalyst for change and ongoing school improvement. School leaders effectively use opportunities that the Kāhui Ako provides to direct and plan improvement, participate in high quality professional development and learn from and support other schools within their community. These growing professional partnerships are helping to promote the conditions for all children to benefit from the expertise and collective ownership that membership of the Kāhui Ako brings.

Sustainable development for equity and excellence

What further developments are needed in school processes to achieve equity and excellence?

The school has many high quality systems and processes in place. These could be further enhanced by improving aspects of internal evaluation and cultural responsiveness.

Leaders are aware of the need to give sufficient priority to evaluating the impact of the actions it has taken to improve equity and excellence. The impact on student outcomes for some initiatives needs to be determined. For example, the school does not yet have good information about how well it is promoting success for Māori children, as Māori.

The detailed action plan in place for 2017 provides a robust framework for improving internal evaluation.

Board assurance on legal requirements

Before the review, the board and principal of the school completed the ERO board assurance statement and self-audit checklists. In these documents they attested that they had taken all reasonable steps to meet their legislative obligations related to the following:

  • board administration
  • curriculum
  • management of health, safety and welfare
  • personnel management
  • asset management.

During the review, ERO checked the following items because they have a potentially high impact on student safety and wellbeing:

  • emotional safety of students (including prevention of bullying and sexual harassment)
  • physical safety of students
  • teacher registration and certification
  • processes for appointing staff
  • stand down, suspension, expulsion and exclusion of students
  • attendance
  • school policies in relation to meeting the requirements of the Vulnerable Children Act 2014.

Provision for international students

The school is a signatory to the Education (Pastoral Care of International Students) Code of Practice 2016 established under section 238F of the Education Act 1989. The school has attested that it complies with all aspects of the Code.

No international students were enrolled at the time of the ERO review.

Going forward

How well placed is the school to accelerate the achievement of all children who need it?

Children are achieving very good educational outcomes. School performance has been sustained over time through well-focused, embedded processes and practices. This school is successfully addressing in-school disparity in educational outcomes.

Agreed next steps are:

  • making more use of the school’s high quality systems and practices to more clearly identify how implementation of the strategic goals is improving outcomes for Māori children, particularly succeeding as Māori.

ERO is likely to carry out the next review in four-to-five years. 

Dr Lesley Patterson

Deputy Chief Review Officer Southern (Te Waipounamu)

14 July 2017

About the school 

Location

Blenheim

Ministry of Education profile number

2978

School type

Full Primary

School roll

535

Gender composition

Boys: 49%

Girls: 51%

Ethnic composition

NZ European Pākehā 82%

Māori 14%

Pacific 1%

Other 3%

Provision of Māori medium education

No

Review team on site

May 2017

Date of this report

14 July 2017

Most recent ERO report(s)

Education Review June 2012

Education Review September 2009

Education Review October 2006