1061 East Coast Road, Kaiaua
View on mapThis Profile Report was written within 6 months of the Education Review Office and Kaiaua 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
Kaiaua School is located in the coastal village of Kaiaua within the boundaries of Ngāti Paoa, the local iwi. It provides education for students in Years 1 to 8. The current principal has been in the role for five years.
Kaiaua School’s strategic priorities for improving outcomes for learners are to:
ensure high levels of progress and achievement by fostering a community of learners
develop positive working relationships to support learner outcomes
sustain a safe and inclusive culture in which the customs and values foster success.
ERO and the school are working together to evaluate the use of strategies to identify and respond to student learning needs, including the use of the Learning Progressions Frameworks.
The rationale for selecting this evaluation is:
to ensure teaching is more strongly targeted to student learning needs
to more accurately measure and respond to student progress.
The school expects to see a greater number of students at risk of underachieving making accelerated progress.
The school can draw from the following strengths to support its goal to evaluate the use of strategies to identify and respond to student learning needs:
Strong community relationships that enrich the curriculum for students.
The development of strong systems to promote a positive, inclusive culture for learning.
Teachers use of a wide range of resources and innovations to respond to student learning needs.
Moving forward, the school will prioritise:
strengthening teaching practices that contribute to well designed and purposeful learning programmes that better promote student achievement
reviewing and modifying assessment systems to ensure a greater focus on the tracking and monitoring of student progress though the learning progressions.
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 Schools
30 August 2023
The Education Counts website provides further information about the school’s student population, student engagement and student achievement. educationcounts.govt.nz/home
As of November 2022, the Kaiaua School Board has attested to the following regulatory and legislative requirements:
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ERO and the board have identified the following areas of non-compliance during the board assurance process:
the development of polices for students with special education needs
[Section 19, NZ Bill of Rights Act, Section 21h, Human Rights Act 1993]
ensure that teachers and authorised staff are suitably trained to undertake physical restraint.
[Section 99 Education and Training Act]
The board has since taken steps to address these areas of non-compliance identified.
For further information please contact Kaiaua 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 Schools
30 August 2023
The Education Counts website provides further information about the school’s student population, student engagement and student achievement. educationcounts.govt.nz/home
Kaiaua School has made sufficient progress to move to ERO’s new School Evaluation for Improvement approach.
Kaiaua School is a small school located in the coastal community of Kaiaua and the tribal boundaries of Ngāti Paoa. It caters for students in Years 1 to 8. Most students on the current roll of 25 identify as Māori. The school has been undertaking a longitudinal review process with ERO since 2018. During that time staff have received significant support from Ministry of Education advisors in the areas of assessment, teaching and leadership.
Fully implement the school’s local curriculum.
Undertake a programme of ongoing leadership development for the principal and teaching team.
Staff have a well-considered curriculum achievement plan that documents age-expected student achievement levels. Teachers use a range of effective tools to assess student achievement levels.
For those who are working below expectations teachers have calculated the accelerated progress each student must make to reach these age-expected levels.
The next step is to upgrade school-wide tracking and monitoring systems to enable teachers to know whether the required progress is being made.
The principal reports twice a year to the board on student progress. As a result, staff and trustees have identified ways they can further support those students who are at risk of not achieving. These reports need to be more frequent so that appropriate and timely interventions can be implemented to support students who are not making the required progress.
Students learn in a supportive and caring environment. Teachers have warm and respectful relationships with students. The school values of respect | whakaute, responsibility | kawenga and resilience | tohenga are well promoted. Achievement data supplied by the school shows that overall achievement in reading has improved since 2018. Achievement in writing and mathematics has remained stable.
A range of effective teaching strategies is evident. These include:
Since the previous 2018 ERO report, teachers have had ongoing support from the Ministry of Education Student Achievement Facilitator (SAF) and undertaken professional development to improve teaching practice. This has led to more effective teaching, particularly in the area of writing. There remains a need to continue this support.
Teachers have developed effective systems in their classrooms to empower students to take more responsibility for their own learning. Teachers need to continue to embed and consistently use these systems.
A positive feature of teacher planning is the use of learning progressions from The New Zealand Curriculum. These progressions enable teachers to identify students’ learning needs. A next step is to ensure that specific and appropriate learning progressions are selected and directly addressed in daily and weekly planning. Student mastery of these progressions should be recorded. These records provide significant evidence for overall teacher judgements about progress and achievement. Teachers need to decide which sets of learning progressions they will use to ensure a consistent and sequential learning pathway throughout the school.
The principal has recently introduced a systematic inquiry approach to identifying overall patterns in student learning. With progress data, teachers should be able to use this new process to measure the effectiveness of teaching strategies and interventions.
A full review of the curriculum has been completed and documented. This clearly sets out the school’s vision and values. General expectations for teachers about what good literacy and mathematics programmes look like at Kaiaua School align with current theory and best practice. Teachers have a tool to support them to localise curriculum content.
Classroom programmes feature the use of local contexts for learning and include the new community gardens that have been established on the school site. Tikanga Māori and Māori knowledge are taught in the school. The school celebrates Matariki annually in conjunction with other community groups. In the junior class, te reo Māori is integrated across the curriculum so that students can learn new vocabulary in relevant contexts. The use of karakia and waiata is evident. The next step for the school is to add a formal, sequential programme of te reo Māori instruction to the classroom timetable.
An important strand of the school’s local curriculum is teaching the history and stories of Ngāti Paoa. The school continues to build its relationship with the people of the local marae. In addition to this, teachers should use other avenues to research and locate local stories and histories to include in the local curriculum.
The principal and the board of trustees have an effective working relationship. Leadership development has led to improvements across all areas of school operation. Professional networking at local and national level supports leadership development. Effective communication has improved the relationship between the school and the local community. A key next step for both the principal and the board is to strengthen target setting and strategic planning.
A foundation of values, tone, climate and relationships has been established that is likely to sustain and improve student learning - engagement, progress and achievement. The school principal and teachers have developed their capacity to reflect, plan, act and report to its community using evidence that includes student achievement information.
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:
During the review, ERO checked the following items because they have a potentially high impact on student achievement:
In order to comply with current regulations, the board of trustees needs to:
[National Administration Guideline (NAG) 1(e)]
[Health and Safety in Work Act 2015 (HSWA 2015)]
[NAG 5, HWSA 2015]
[Children’s Act 2014]
ERO recommends that the Ministry of Education consider continuing support for the board and principal to consolidate and further progress school development in relation to the areas identified in this report, particularly in relation to the compliance issues.
The school has made sufficient progress to move to ERO’s new School Evaluation for Improvement approach.
Shelley Booysen
Acting Director Review and Improvement Services (Central)
Central Region - Te Tai Pūtahi Nui
10 December 2021