Target Road School

School Context

Target Road School, on Auckland’s North Shore, serves a diverse ethnic community. The growing roll caters for students from Years 1 to 6, with approximately 16 percent of children identifying as Māori and nine percent with Pacific heritage.

The school values of Respect - Manaakitanga, Resilience - Takohanga, and Responsibility - Manawaroa, underpin the school’s culture. The school’s vision, Whaia Te Iti Kahurangi, is to develop independent learners who aim high and are courageous in their pursuit of learning.

Since the 2014 ERO evaluation, the school has responded well to roll growth, and the number of staff who are new to the school or new to teaching. Leadership has been restructured, with some leaders new to their roles. The school has strengthened learning partnerships with whānau and the community and has embraced Kāhui Ako initiatives and ways of working across schools.

Leaders and teachers regularly report to the board, schoolwide information about outcomes for students in the following areas:

• achievement in reading, writing and mathematics in relation to New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) levels
• attendance
• Kāhui Ako Visible Learning reports
• School values in action.

Target Road School is a member of the Kaipātiki Kāhui Ako | Community of Learning (CoL).

Evaluation Findings

1 Equity and excellence – achievement of valued outcomes for students

1.1 How well is the school achieving equitable and excellent outcomes for all its students?

The school is working towards achieving equitable and excellent outcomes for children.

School achievement data prior to 2018 show that most children achieve at expected curriculum levels in reading, writing and mathematics. Appropriate systems and processes are in place to ensure reliability of data.

Leaders have identified some gender disparity in writing and have implemented a range of initiatives to increase parity. They have identified initiatives to accelerate achievement, including that of target groups in mathematics. Leaders are now planning systems to extend and deepen analysis of data to help them further support parity for all groups of learners.

The board of trustees demonstrates a commitment to resourcing learning support. An extensive range of useful interventions and programmes helps children to successfully access the curriculum.

Students achieve well in relation to other valued outcomes. These include:

• demonstrating school values that support positive interactions with others
• using the Target Road Learner Profile to guide school behaviours and practices
• using self-assessment and inquiry process tools, such as the Solo Taxonomy, to guide learning
• participating in events within the local and wider community.

1.2 How well is the school accelerating learning for those Māori and other students who need this?

School leaders are developing a more robust focus on accelerating learning for specific groups of learners.

The school’s three tier model of learning support provides a useful structure for accelerating children’s learning. Individual learning plans are developed collaboratively by teachers, children and whānau, as appropriate. Teachers and leaders use digital platforms and tools to share knowledge to further support children with additional learning needs.

Teachers and support staff provide a wide range of interventions to ensure that children who are at risk of underachieving are supported to experience success. Teacher aides play an important role in supporting these children and teachers within an inclusive environment. Leaders have identified that a next step is to evaluate these initiatives to identify their impact on accelerating student learning.

A special feature of the school is the twice weekly Gateway whānau class, Roopu Raranga, which has been in place for three years. This programme promotes opportunities for some Māori children to further enhance their success as Māori, and to learn collaboratively with and from others. Leaders and staff are monitoring this programme, and almost all children who participate experience success within the programme and in other aspects of their learning in the wider school environment.

2 School conditions for equity and excellence – processes and practices

2.1 What school processes and practices are effective in enabling achievement of equity and excellence, and acceleration of learning?

The school has very strong, educationally powerful connections and relationships with parents, whānau and community. Children, teachers and adults benefit from these learning centred, reciprocal relationships. These relationships empower whānau/families to contribute to their children’s learning with confidence. Teachers use reporting to parents and digital initiatives as opportunities to build learning focused partnerships. Leaders promote a values-based culture with a community that is focused on everyone working together to support each other.

The school's vision, values, goals and priorities underpin the positive learning environment, and are evident in curriculum processes and practices. Senior leaders work collaboratively with staff to review and adapt the curriculum to guide programme planning and implementation. The increasingly responsive curriculum is continuing to evolve. There is an appropriate focus on literacy and numeracy. Purposeful learning experiences use real life contexts. All children have opportunities to learn languages other than English, including te reo Māori, Mandarin and Sign Language.

Teachers use assessment well to plan for differentiated learning programmes. They support children to understand their learning and make links across different curriculum areas.

The school’s distributed leadership model provides opportunities to grow leaders and capitalise on teachers’ and children’s strengths. Continuing to develop leadership capability should support the school’s good work towards achieving the vision for learning.

A well-established teacher inquiry model and effective coaching and mentoring processes provide very good guidance for teachers and promote professional dialogue and reflection. This fosters shared understandings, high expectations and consistency in good teaching practice.

Strong networks within the Kaipātiki Kāhui Ako are resulting in useful connections and initiatives to improve educational outcomes for children. One example is effective school transition practices that support student wellbeing.

2.2 What further developments are needed in school processes and practices for achievement of equity and excellence, and acceleration of learning?

Leaders agree that key elements for further development include:

• continuing to strengthen internal evaluation processes, to identify which initiatives have the greatest impact on accelerating student progress and achievement
• improved collation and analysis of achievement information, to better differentiate planning and identify outcomes for specific groups of children.

3 Other Matters

Provision for international students

The school is a signatory to the Education (Pastoral Care of International Students) Code of Practice 2016 (the Code), established under section 238F of the Education Act 1989. The school has attested that it complies with all aspects of the Code. Two international students were enrolled at the time of the review.

The school has effective systems that support international students’ education and care. Students benefit from the school’s inclusive culture, and opportunities to participate in a wide range of activities.

4 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
• finance
• 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.

5 ERO’s Overall Judgement

On the basis of the findings of this review, ERO’s overall evaluation judgement of Target Road School’s performance in achieving valued outcomes for its students is: Well placed.

ERO’s Framework: Overall School Performance is available on ERO’s website.

6 Going forward

Key strengths of the school

For sustained improvement and future learner success, the school can draw on existing strengths in:

• strong interpersonal relationships and a schoolwide focus on pastoral care
• an inclusive learning culture that promotes opportunities for children to experience success and take increasing ownership of their learning
• responding to the needs of the children and changing diversity of the community
• leaders and teachers using an effective coaching and mentoring model to develop shared schoolwide expectations.

Next steps

For sustained improvement and future learner success, priorities for further development are in:

• continuing to strengthen leaders new to their roles and to build sustainability of systems and processes in a growing school
• continuing to strengthen internal evaluation across the school
• supporting the training and development of the new board.

Steve Tanner

Director Review and Improvement Services Northern

Northern Region

24 October 2019

About the school