Hikurangi School

1 Context

Hikurangi School provides education for children in Years 1 to 8. Over 60 percent of the children in the school are Māori. Ngā Whetu, a te reo Māori immersion class was established at the beginning of 2015 and currently includes children from Years 1 to 4. The school continues to provide a boys' class and a girls' class for senior students. During the past two years three classes have developed digital learning environments for teaching and learning.

Changes to the senior leadership team have resulted in more collaborative and well-focused leadership practices to guide teaching and learning developments. The school has been involved in professional learning initiatives along with a cluster of Whangarei schools. This has helped teachers to improve reading, te reo Māori and digital learning programmes.

A health clinic operates in the school one day each week and offers free medical checks and support. A social worker is available to work with children and their families and whānau. Children also have the opportunity to breakfast together and this helps them develop their social skills and increases their readiness for learning.

2 Equity and excellence

The vision and valued outcomes defined by the school for all children are "to develop children who are life-long learners, who can communicate effectively, are self-managing and socially adept". Leaders and teachers have recently developed a set of school qualities entitled Ngā Uara o te kura o Hikurangi. These qualities are the Māori value concepts of Te Arohatanga, Manaakitanga, Tumanako, and Whakapono.

Overall student achievement levels in the National Standards have varied over the past three years. There has been significant improvement in reading and mathematics achievement in recent years. The school's 2015 data show that while the achievement of Māori children as a group is comparable to other children in reading, it is lower in writing and mathematics. Leaders recognise that student achievement in writing continues to be considerably lower than achievement in the other standards.

Leaders and teachers moderate the assessment of samples of children's writing to increase the reliability and accuracy of their data. Leaders have also worked with teachers in order to establish greater consistency in the use and analysis of reading and mathematics assessments.

Since the last ERO evaluation teaching and learning have improved. Leaders and teachers have taken advantage of professional learning initiatives to help them raise children's achievement in reading and mathematics. Teachers are also developing their knowledge and use of te reo Māori me ōna tikanga in their classroom and school programmes. Teachers in the senior classes have embraced well-tailored professional development that is helping them increase children's use of digital technologies for learning.

3 Accelerating achievement

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

The school has become increasingly successful in accelerating the progress of Māori children who comprise the majority of children at the school. Similar processes and practices are used to respond to Māori children and other children whose progress needs to be accelerated.

Senior leaders play a pivotal role in helping to accelerate children's progress. They have very good knowledge of children and their whānau and are very responsive to individual children's learning and social needs. Leaders and teachers carefully monitor children's engagement and progress.

Leaders and teachers have been developing good practices to identify children at risk of not achieving National Standards. They use a broad range of classroom-based and standardised assessments to identify specific gaps in children's learning. This helps them to focus their teaching.  

Teachers plan relevant, interesting and hands-on programmes to support children's learning. They identify particular target groups of children who need to have their progress accelerated. Teachers regularly discuss the progress of these target groups with their colleagues to share strategies for better supporting these children. This practice is building teachers' collective sense of responsibility for each and every child's progress.

The teacher of the Ngā Whetu class is developing assessments that relate to Ngā Whanaketanga, which align to the National Standards.

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

In the same way that the school is becoming increasingly successful at accelerating the progress of Māori children it is becoming increasingly successful with other children.

The school charter includes annual targets aimed appropriately at accelerating the progress of priority groups of children who are not yet achieving the National Standards. Progress towards these targets is monitored and discussed by teachers, teaching teams and leaders.

Senior leaders have been building greater consistency in assessment practices and teaching strategies to support children's progress. For example, teachers are increasingly consistently supporting children to understand their achievement and progress. This benefitting all children through the school and giving them a greater sense of owning their learning.

Senior leaders and teachers are continuing to develop useful ways to collect evidence of children's accelerated progress. They recognise the need to support teachers to increase their focus on accelerating learning. Senior leaders agree that this could be done by teachers evaluating each child's progress term by term to ensure that children are on track to reach their 'acceleration goal'. 

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?

An inclusive culture and good processes and practices are used to promote equity and excellence in children's outcomes. The board, leaders and teachers have a concerted and strong focus on supporting all learners to have a sense of belonging and wellbeing at school. Te reo Māori me ōna tikanga is a valued and growing part of the school culture and curriculum.

Many aspects of the curriculum and teaching practices are supporting children to become 'effective communicators and socially adept'. Children interact and form friendships with different groups including through kapa haka, and the breakfast club. Cooperative interactions and tuakana teina relationships are very evident. Children have opportunities to become 'self-managing learners' through teachers increasingly sharing success criteria and assessment information and helping children to identify their next learning steps.

Children experience a curriculum that is engaging, motivating, and helps them to succeed in their learning. The school's curriculum is being shaped by leaders' and teachers' reflection, and by relevant professional learning. It is appropriately underpinned by the principles of the New Zealand Curriculum and is aimed at helping children to become inquiring, life-long learners.

Generosity and reciprocity is evident between the school and community. There is a mutual valuing of the roles that the school and whānau play in children's development and progress. Whānau shared with ERO their appreciation of leaders' and teachers' open communication and proactive support for children and whānau. Parents are confident to approach leaders and teachers to share any concerns or seek advice. Parents are well informed about their children's achievement and are offered useful strategies to support children's learning at home.

Through collaborative approaches teachers' opportunities and capability to lead curriculum development and professional learning are being increased. Teachers are responding well to new and different approaches to teaching and learning. An example of this is the way that teachers are more successfully integrating te reo Māori into their programmes. Leaders and teachers work together to sustain or adapt new approaches to suit the school.

Teachers' professional learning has had a marked and positive impact on outcomes and achievement for many children. Senior leaders plan to organise further professional learning to assist teachers to accelerate children's achievement in writing.

Leaders and teachers have been developing ways to inquire into the impact of their teaching practice on children's engagement and progress. They are considering how to record their evaluative thinking and the discussions that they have at syndicate and staff meetings. These records could be particularly useful for tracking and evaluating the impact of teaching strategies on accelerating the progress of individuals and groups of children over each year and successive years.

At the time of this evaluation, a new board had just been elected. The previous board followed relevant governance practice and has supported the school through the changes of the past three years. The principal shares and discusses student achievement data with the board each term. Senior leaders acknowledge that including each syndicate's evaluation of achievement data could be useful in reporting to the board.

ERO recommends that the new board engage in governance training to assist new and returning trustees to build the board's capability and capacity.

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.

Hikurangi School is in a good position to sustain developments being made to build teacher capability and to evaluate and adapt practices to further accelerate children's progress, particularly in writing.  Senior leaders acknowledge that there would be value in developing an overarching plan to coordinate all aspects of the school's approach to accelerating children's achievement.

Developing a straightforward and multipurpose evaluative framework could assist with gauging the impact of school strategies and initiatives. As part of the digital professional learning that some teachers have undertaken, they have trialled a new inquiry template. This template provides a sound evaluative framework that could be used by individual teachers, syndicates, leaders and the staff. It would give teachers a more coherent process for bringing together the reflection and evaluation that they currently do. Using this evaluative inquiry approach may help to sharpen teachers' focus on accelerating children's progress.

In addition, this evaluative framework could also be incorporated into the school's performance management practices. The principal acknowledges the need to review and adapt the school's teacher appraisal process so that it meets the new Education Council requirements.

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 a Raising Achievement Plan to further develop processes and practices that 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 Raising Achievement plan 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

7 Recommendation

ERO recommends school leaders sustain the momentum for accelerating children's progress and raising overall achievement through further planning and by continuing to build evaluative capability. Evidence-based evaluation should help teachers to better gauge the impact of their programmes on children's learning and make changes that increase children's engagement, progress and achievement. 

Graham Randell
Deputy Chief Review Officer Northern

25 August 2016

About the school