Henderson School

Henderson School

Te Ara Huarau | School Profile Report

Background

This Profile Report was written within six months of the Education Review Office and Henderson 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 

Henderson School caters for Year 1 to 6 ākonga/ learners and is in Henderson, Auckland City. The school’s vision is for tamariki/students to ‘Face the future with confidence! KIA MATAKITE! KIA MĀIA!’

The school values are to be WARM hearted. A heart image is used to tie the values together:

  • Work hard

  • Act safely

  • Respect ourselves, others and our environment; and

  • Make good choices.

Henderson School’s strategic priorities for improving outcomes for learners are to:

  • be a community of learners who face the future with confidence 

  • embed a culturally relevant localised curriculum across the kura/school

  • create a strong learner focused partnership with whānau and families

  • grow kaiako/teachers and kaiarataki/leaders pedagogical knowledge skills and understanding

  • provide fit for purpose learning environments and ensure financial stability.

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

ERO and the school are working together to evaluate how well the culturally responsive curriculum provides equitable and quality learning outcomes for all ākonga.

Embedded into the evaluation is a focus on how well:

  • student agency is woven through learning

  • whānau engagement supports ākonga to face their future with confidence

  • kaiako and kaiarataki are adaptive and consistent in their practice.

The rationale for selecting this evaluation is:

  • the school has theory informed expectations around curriculum delivery, teaching, learning and assessment

  • student agency is a major focus for the school, aligned to wellbeing, progress and lifting levels of achievement

  • an expectation that the school and community work together to foster and promote a community of learners

  • equity and high-quality teaching practices are core expectations for all kaiako and kaiarataki

  • the curriculum is undergoing a refresh, so it is a priority for the school to ensure it remains culturally responsive and relational.

The school expects to see:

  • multiple and equitable opportunities provided to ākonga, focused on building agency, achievement and confidence

  • self-determining ākonga who are confident in their culture, language and identity

  • ākonga understand what it means to be ‘WARM hearted’

  • adaptive and consistent practices explicitly focused on positive learner outcomes

  • genuine whānau engagement with the school

  • professional learning to build capacity and capability of kaiako and kaiarataki.

Strengths

The school can draw from the following strengths to support their goal to evaluate how well the culturally responsive curriculum provides equitable and quality learning outcomes for all ākonga:

  • improved and tested learning progressions ensure kaiako are tracking ākonga individual progress and achievement

  • developing ākonga critical thinking communication skills supports building agency

  • a focus on broadening ākonga horizons through external expertise

  • an inclusive learning culture focused on ākonga and staff wellbeing

  • school wide coaching and mentoring processes to support kaiako and kaiarataki in capability building.

Where to next?

Moving forward, the school will prioritise:

  • identifying ākonga agency across the broad curriculum

  • close monitoring of learners below expected levels of attainment and attendance

  • incorporating the National Education Learning Priorities into strategic planning

  • the collection of stakeholder voices and experiences to inform the evaluation.

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.

Shelley Booysen
Director of School

28 August 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

Henderson School

Board Assurance with Regulatory and Legislative Requirements Report 2023 to 2026

As of February 2023, the Henderson 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 Henderson 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.

Shelley Booysen
Director of School

28 August 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

Henderson School - 15/02/2017

1 Context

Henderson School in Auckland provides education for children from Years 1 to 6. The community is culturally diverse and this is celebrated by children, parents and staff.

Since the 2013 ERO review the board has appointed a new principal, and two senior leaders. There have also been many changes in teaching staff. During 2016 senior leaders took on the roles of acting principal and deputy principal for three terms while the previous principal was on study leave. In term four the new principal took up his role at the school. This year a new board was elected with two continuing trustees and others who are new to the trustee role.

The school is part of the Waitakere Area Principals' Association (WAPA), which was formed to build professional connections between staff in a cluster of local schools. The association's aim is to raise achievement across the Waitakere area.

2 Equity and excellence

The vision and valued outcomes defined by the school for all children are noted in the school's charter. The school aims to support children to become creative, confident, connected, actively involved lifelong learners. The school values include rerekētanga which shows respect for all cultures, equal opportunity and fairness for all children. The charter also encourages children, parents and staff to be 'WARM hearted':

  • Work hard (pakeke mahi)
  • Act safely (mahi ora)
  • Respect (manaaki)
  • Make good choices (kia pai kōwhiringa)

The school’s achievement information shows that overall there has been decreasing achievement however, this is due to improved assessment practices which have resulted in more reliable data. In 2016 between 64 - 70% of children achieved the National Standards. There is continuing disparity between the achievement of Māori children and other groups in the school. There are also gender disparities identified mainly in writing achievement.

Teachers use a wide range of appropriate assessments to guide their overall judgements about each child's achievement. They have opportunities to compare and discuss their assessments as a staff and to moderate assessments with teachers in other WAPA schools.

Since the last ERO evaluation the school has engaged positively with the Leadership and Assessment initiative funded by the Ministry of Education. This externally facilitated professional learning has focused on improving the quality of leadership and teaching particularly in reading and mathematics. This initiative has been complemented by the continuing programmes Accelerating Literacy Learning, and Accelerating Learning in Mathematics.

3 Accelerating achievement

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

The school is becoming increasingly successful in accelerating the progress of Māori children who are at risk of not achieving the National Standards. Similar strategies and practices are used by leaders and teachers to support Māori and other learners to make accelerated progress.

The school charter includes annual targets aimed appropriately at accelerating the progress of priority groups of children at risk of not achieving the national standards. Priority groups include children who are Māori, Pacific or have special learning needs. Progress towards these targets is monitored and discussed by teaching teams and leaders.

Teachers are increasingly developing relationships with whānau so that they are better able to work together to support children’s progress. Teachers invite whānau to share their perspectives about their children's interests, learning strengths and challenges. Together with information from past teachers, this knowledge helps teachers to gain a broad understanding of individual children and their learning.

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

The school is becoming increasingly successful in accelerating the progress of other children who are at risk of not achieving National Standards.

With the support of an external facilitator, leaders and teachers have been developing relevant practices to identify children at risk of not achieving the National Standards. They use a broad range of classroom based and standardised assessments to identify specific gaps in children's learning and to focus their teaching. Together, leaders and teachers are developing their analysis and use of assessment data.

The external facilitator has helped teachers to better understand the role they have in accelerating children's learning. Teachers now plan more relevant programmes particularly for children who need to accelerate their learning. Teachers' inquiry into the impact of teaching practice on priority children's achievement is developing. They share the progress of these children in their teaching syndicates so that they can better support children's progress. This collaboration is helping teachers to provide programmes that are more targeted to children's individual learning strengths and needs.

School leaders have been building greater consistency of assessment and teaching strategies to support children's progress. For example, teachers are increasingly supporting children to understand their achievement and to take ownership of their progress. In some classes children know the criteria needed for them to achieve learning goals and have opportunities to assess their peers' work, provide praise and suggest ways to improve achievement.

Leaders are developing strategies for identifying and collecting evidence of children's accelerated progress. They recognise the need to support teachers to increase their focus on accelerated learning. Leaders agree that this could be done by teachers evaluating each child's progress term by term to ensure that children reach their acceleration goals. 

4 School conditions

How effectively do the school’s curriculum and other organisational processes and practices develop and enact the school’s vision, values, goals and targets for equity and excellence?

The school is developing a curriculum and practices that are promoting greater equity and excellence. A positive impact of the professional development through the Leadership and Assessment programme has been the development of a significantly different teaching culture. Leaders and teachers have built a more collaborative working environment. This is helping them to develop a more reflective teaching culture to promote increasingly flexible, responsive learning for children.

The principal is currently reviewing the school curriculum. He plans to adapt the curriculum to better reflect community aspirations and children's learning strengths, needs and interests. This will involve working collaboratively with staff to develop a curriculum document that will guide programme planning and implementation.

Class programmes appropriately emphasise literacy and mathematics. The school's integrated approach to the wider curriculum helps children to make connections across learning areas. Increasingly, children’s languages and cultural identities are being considered in the curriculum. In some classes children have opportunities to research topics that are of special interest to them. This is helping them to consolidate their literacy and mathematical skills through curriculum contexts.

Children's wellbeing and sense of belonging in the school is promoted well. The school culture is more child focused, supporting children's wellbeing to engage and their motivation to learn. The school's 'WARM' values and the 'Positive Behaviour for Learning' programme are encouraging children to work together cooperatively and to manage their own learning and behaviour. Leaders have taken advantage of the professional development programme to establish greater consistency in teaching approaches and behaviour expectations across the school. As a result, children are familiar with teachers' expectations as they transition across the year levels.

In 2017, the board plans to participate in a training programme with the New Zealand School Trustees' Association. The aim is to develop trustees' understanding of governance and stewardship, and to help the board provide better scrutiny of how well the school is working and meeting requirements. Trustees could also consider evaluating the effectiveness of their practice as a board.

Parents who spoke with ERO value the school's open, inclusive culture for their children. They appreciate the more frequent communications initiated by the new principal and some noted that they would like more opportunities to offer their perspective on school practices and developments. Opportunities like this could encourage parents to be more involved in the school and to gain greater understanding about how to best support their children's learning. 

5 Going forward

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

Leaders and teachers:

  • know the children whose learning and achievement need to be accelerated
  • respond to the strengths, needs and interests of each child
  • regularly evaluate how teaching is working for these children
  • need to systematically act on what they know works for each child
  • need to have a plan in place to build teacher capability to accelerate the achievement of all children who need it.

Henderson School is now better placed to continue building governance, leadership, and teaching capability to benefit children's learning progress. The school has appropriate plans to continue with the current professional development programme in 2017 to focus more specifically on the teaching of writing, and evaluation and inquiry.

School leaders acknowledge that development priorities include:

  • further developing children's understanding of their own achievement and next learning steps
  • continuing to grow teachers' understanding of best practice in accelerating priority children's learning in classrooms
  • ensuring the charter more explicitly shows the school’s commitment to supporting children to have equitable and excellent learning experiences and outcomes
  • adapting charter action plans to more specifically focus on accelerating children's progress
  • more frequent, deliberate evaluation of charter action planning to measure rates of children's progress and to adapt learning programmes to sustain and increase this progress
  • ongoing leader and teacher evaluation of learning programmes based around accelerated goals for each child at risk of not achieving
  • further developing evaluation and inquiry at board and leadership levels, and by teachers and children.

Action: The board, principal and teachers should use the findings of this evaluation, the Effective School Evaluation resource, the Internal Evaluation: Good Practice exemplars and the School Evaluation Indicators to develop more targeted planning to accelerate student achievement. Planning should show how processes and practices will respond effectively to the strengths and needs of children whose learning and achievement need to be accelerated.

As part of this review ERO will continue to monitor the school’s planning and the progress the school makes. ERO is likely to carry out the next full review in three years.

6 Board assurance on legal requirements

Before the review the board of trustees 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

  • processes for appointing staff

  • stand down, suspensions, expulsions and exclusions

  • attendance

  • compliance with the provisions of the Vulnerable Children Act 2014.

Action: The board must, in consultation with the school's Māori community, develop and make known to the school's community, its policies, plans and targets for improving the achievement of Māori students.

National Administrative Guideline 1e.

7 Recommendation

ERO recommends that trustees, leaders and teachers continue with the planned professional development to raise the quality of stewardship and teaching in order to promote equity and excellence for all children. 

Graham Randell

Deputy Chief Review Officer Northern

15 February 2017

About the school 

Location

Henderson, Auckland

Ministry of Education profile number

1309

School type

Contributing (Years 1 to 6)

School roll

232

Gender composition

Boys 57% Girls 43%

Ethnic composition

Māori

Pākehā

Samoan

Asian

Indian

Fijian

Tongan

Middle Eastern

African

other Pacific

other

25%

13%

11%

9%

8%

6%

5%

3%

2%

8%

10%

Review team on site

December 2016

Date of this report

15 February 2017

Most recent ERO report(s)

Education Review

Education Review

Supplementary Review

January 2013

December 2009

February 2007