School Context
Wigram Primary School – Te Piki Kahu - is for students in Years 1 to 6 from a culturally diverse community.
The school’s vision is: Learning together – Soaring to New Heights, Ma Te huru huru, Ka rere Te manu. The valued outcomes for students are shown through the HEART values of: Hauora, Explore, Aspire, Respect and Taonga.
Key strategic goals include accelerating the progress of all students in reading, writing and mathematics, supported by continuing to develop the school’s local curriculum, assessment and reporting.
Leaders and teachers regularly report to the board, schoolwide information about outcomes for students in the following areas:
- achievement in reading, writing and mathematics
- outcomes for priority students and those with additional learning needs.
The school is newly built and located in the recently developed community of Wigram. It relocated from its former Sockburn site in February 2019.
Leaders and teachers have recently been involved in professional learning and development through the Ministry of Education’s Student Achievement Function, the Manaiakalani Outreach project for the use of digital technologies in teaching and learning, and the Positive Behaviour for Learning programme.
The school is a member of the Uru Mānuka Kāhui Ako|Community of Learning.
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 effectively achieving equitable and excellent outcomes for its students.
School achievement information for 2018 shows that most students achieve at or above expected curriculum levels in reading, writing and mathematics. There is no disparity for Māori in reading, writing and mathematics. Overall achievement in writing, and particularly boys’ writing, is not as strong as achievement in reading and mathematics.
1.2 How well is the school accelerating learning for those Māori and other students who need this?
In 2018, the school had success accelerating learning in writing for those Māori students and other students who need this. School information shows that approximately a third of all students in Years 3 to 6 made accelerated progress in writing. Outcomes in relation to acceleration of learning in reading and mathematics were not available to ERO at the onsite stage of the review.
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?
Students learn in caring, responsive and inclusive learning communities. They are active participants and demonstrate increasing ownership of their learning as they move through the school.
Teachers model collaborative and respectful relationships. They use their knowledge of individual students to provide a rich curriculum and differentiated programmes designed to meet their needs and interests. A range of targeted and well-planned interventions is provided. Effective, reciprocal communication between home and school, allows for shared understanding of students’ learning goals and progress.
Parents, whānau and community are welcomed and involved in school activities as respected partners in learning. Leaders take a proactive approach to establishing links with the local community, reaching out to local groups and inviting them into the school. They have been effective in developing a cultural narrative in partnership with whānau and rūnunga. A regular, schoolwide kapa haka programme is strengthening bicultural practices.
Leaders have high expectations for teaching and learning, with student wellbeing and progress as core concerns. Leaders are improvement focused. They make good use of internal and external expertise and seek the perspectives of students, parents and whānau to support the development of school priorities. A distributed leadership structure promotes a collaborative team approach to finding solutions and developing best fit teaching strategies and practices.
Trustees are well informed and effective in their stewardship role. They access a range of information to set priorities for future focus.
2.2 What further developments are needed in school processes and practices for achievement of equity and excellence, and acceleration of learning?
Trustees and leaders need to continue to develop strategic planning to set and define a small number of priorities that are known to all and are designed to best support the school’s valued outcomes for students.
They also need to make better use of achievement information to know about all students’ progress and achievement. This includes a need to analyse, monitor and report achievement to know about overall trends and patterns, rates and sufficiency of progress for individual and groups of students. This information needs to inform decision making at all levels of the school.
The school needs to review and strengthen processes and practices of teacher appraisal to meet the requirements of the Teaching Council.
3 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.
4 ERO’s Overall Judgement
On the basis of the findings of this review, ERO’s overall evaluation judgement of Wigram Primary School - Te Piki Kahu’s performance in achieving valued outcomes for its students is: Well placed.
ERO’s Framework: Overall School Performance is available on ERO’s website.
5 Going forward
Key strengths of the school
For sustained improvement and future learner success, the school can draw on existing strengths in:
- achieving outcomes for students that are equitable and show consistently good levels of achievement
- a culture of collaboration that maintains high expectations for teaching and learning
- the way students are empowered to be active participants in, and demonstrate increasing ownership of, their learning as they move through the school.
Next steps
For sustained improvement and future learner success, priorities for further development are in:
- refining strategic planning to set key priorities that best support valued student outcomes
- further development of data management systems to support coherent reporting of student achievement and progress.
Alan Wynyard
Director Review and Improvement Services Southern
Southern Region
18 June 2019
About the school
| Location | Christchurch |
| Ministry of Education profile number | 3505 |
| School type | Contributing primary (Years 1 to 6) |
| School roll | 259 |
| Gender composition | Girls 54%; Boys 46% |
| Ethnic composition | Māori 12% NZ European/Pākehā 38% Chinese 11% Indian 9% Middle East 5% Filipino 5% Samoan 4% Other ethnicities 16% |
| Students with Ongoing Resourcing Funding (ORS) | No |
| Provision of Māori medium education | No |
| Review team on site | May 2019 |
| Date of this report | 18 June 2019 |
| Most recent ERO report(s) | First Review as Wigram School As Sockburn School:
Education Review November 2015
Education Review June 2012 |