Tracking for success

We needed to find a better picture of what our students looked like, and so we designed and then got built by our SMS provider a longitudinal tracking tool to look at our junior students, which gave us a better way to support those students through the junior school, as well as a better picture of what those students looked like in terms of their achievement coming into Year 11. And so we had a bit of an understanding of them right from the outset of their NCEA career.

The other thing that we did is we looked more carefully at how we were dealing with our NCEA data and using that data to support those students and really start to see where and how they're tracking across the year. The tracking tool has to be quite sophisticated so that went right on the front burner.

The other thing was we need to know their names. We use the phrase, 'not failed, yet to achieve success'. And so it's not over until it's over. And so yes, it was January, and yes, we had some students who had not yet achieved NCEA level 1.

How do we get them there? And once we know them, how do we look after them to make sure that in the course of their level 2, they achieve level 1 as well? The tool enables us to look at where the student is at, as well as what opportunities are available to them remaining in that year.

All those in red.

He's still got...

He's actually got some here, yeah, yeah..

But these red ones even if they do have plenty of opportunities available to them - these are the sorts of ones that we definitely do need to be keeping an eye on as well -obviously something hasn't gone well for them during the course of the year probably, or they've got a higher reliance on external folios. There's a real balancing act there. We're not out there giving cheap credits if you like. It's not what it's about at all and that is not how it transpired. And what we had to do was look at what opportunities we might be able to create for some of those students who might be at risk of not getting over the line, whilst being ethical about that.

So it was looking at where there might be further assessment opportunities available for students, or perhaps in some subjects, what extra standards we might be able to offer with the appropriate programmes of teaching and learning that we can take them through.

You've got to be authentic and you've got to be real. And staff were terrific.

We had some stuff there that was pretty unpalatable after ten years of really hard work on raising achievement for our Māori students. And so we wanted answers. We all did some soul searching, all in our own particular ways and we led that agentic mind-set.

So we moved really quickly from: you've got to have the long hard look, to now: what's my bit in that, and what are the tools that we've been able to put in people's hands to enable them to make a difference for these students.

Teachers genuinely really cared and really wanted to make a difference for these students. And a lot of the team worked really closely with getting in touch with parents and whānau to say: hey look, we're creating these opportunities for students. We'd really like your support to get students along. And parents were excited about it. Students were excited about it. And teachers became excited about it as well because they could see the students lighting up with the opportunity to get across the line when maybe they were thinking: oh, it's over for me now.

It's all about the students, and knowing them, and knowing where they're going, and being able to co-construct with the student. So we can do that wrapping around of the care of the student to make sure that we can advise the students on their best bet from now on, because sometimes it actually isn't possible to turn the clock back. So looking forward and being agentic, where are we going to go together now.