St Patrick’s School is a coeducational Catholic school for Years 1 to 8 students. The school’s well-established history and longstanding traditions related to the Mission Sisters founding order continue to provide an important foundation for education at the school. Christian values are actively shared and promoted across the school and community.
Strong support from the local parish and PTA contributes significantly to the school’s positive culture and improved resources and facilities. They also provide a wide range of pastoral care and support for families.
As a result of the Canterbury earthquakes, the school has experienced some roll decline since the February 2010 ERO review. During that time there have also been some changes in staff.
The school has made very good progress addressing the recommendations in the 2010 ERO report in regard to appraisal, programme evaluations and the teaching of reading.
The school’s active involvement in building stronger links and a greater sense of partnership with local schools and early childhood centres in Kaiapoi is benefiting children, staff and leaders.
Leaders and teachers make effective use of achievement information to make positive changes to learners’ engagement, progress and achievement. This is particularly evident in the ways:
The school carefully monitors and provides an appropriate variety of additional support for students with the greatest learning needs. Students with particular strengths and abilities also benefit from a good range of activities, including high quality broadcasting and creative writing programmes, that extend their talents and provide stimulating challenges.
The varied range of strategies teachers use for reporting to parents is helping to build positive learning partnerships and keep parents well informed about their children’s progress.
School achievement information against the National Standards in 2013 reflects ongoing and positive trends in improvement across the school over the last three years. Achievement is highest in reading where most students are achieving above the National Standards. Progress over time is most evident in written language.
Extending the analysis and reporting about overall student achievement should further improve practices in this area. This should include:
The school’s curriculum successfully promotes and supports student learning.
The school’s collaboratively-designed and updated curriculum provides students with a well-balanced range of learning opportunities. It is strongly linked to the school’s special character and effectively integrates the values and key competencies of the New Zealand Curriculum. Curriculum guidelines give suitable emphasis to clarifying expectations in regard to teaching and learning.
In classrooms, students clearly benefit from:
Senior students benefit from more opportunities to develop their leadership skills, especially in regard to supporting younger students.
Teachers provide positive, attractive and supportive learning environments for students. Relationships between teachers and students, and among students, strongly reflect the school’s values of caring, co-operation and support for others. Student’s wellbeing is actively promoted and supported across the school, community and parish.
Leaders and teachers should:
Leaders and teachers have identified, and ERO agrees, that the e-learning strategic plan needs further development and that it is now time for a review of the school’s use of inquiry teaching and learning practices.
The school is making good progress in promoting educational success for Māori, as Māori. Kapa haka is enthusiastically supported by students and has an increasingly higher profile. Overall, Māori students achieve well. The school’s religious education programme is used effectively to integrate biculturalism into the curriculum.
Leaders and teachers have identified that their next step is to further integrate te reo and tikanga Māori in classroom programmes and practices.
The school is very well placed to sustain and improve its performance.
The board uses a collaborative process for establishing clear strategic priorities that help the school community to work together towards common goals. The principal provides useful information to inform board decision making, target setting and resourcing.
The principal and other leaders model and provide improvement-focused leadership. This includes:
The board and school leaders should now ensure that their planned developments result in further improvements to board and curriculum self review. This should include:
There is also scope to rationalise some elements of planning and evaluation at the school by making clearer links between various documents and practices.
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:
ERO is likely to carry out the next review in three years.
Graham Randell
National Manager Review Services Southern Region
6 June 2014
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Location |
Kaiapoi, North Canterbury |
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Ministry of Education profile number |
3540 |
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School type |
Full Primary (Years 1 to 8) |
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School roll |
114 |
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Gender composition |
Girls 54% Boys 46% |
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Ethnic composition |
NZ European/Pākehā Māori Other Ethnicities |
84% 10% 6% |
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Review team on site |
March 2014 |
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Date of this report |
6 June 2014 |
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Most recent ERO reports |
Education Review Education Review Education Review |
February 2010 December 2006 April 2004 |