Frankley School

Frankley School

Te Ara Huarau | School Profile Report

Background

This Profile Report was written within 6 months of the Education Review Office and Frankley 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 

Frankley School is a co-educational primary school catering for learners from years 1 to 6. Frankley School is located in New Plymouth.

Frankley School’s strategic priorities for improving outcomes for learners are:

  • Tū ako: growing capability through purposeful learning programmes

  • Tū manaaki: living Te Tiriti o Waitangi

  • Tū kaha: collaborating with community and experts.

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

ERO and the school are working together to evaluate how effectively the school is achieving its strategic priorities.

The rationale for selecting this evaluation is that the school has recently completed a comprehensive community consultation process to establish a coherent strategic plan that will direct its priorities for the next three years.

The school expects to see:

  • agentic learners continuing to achieve equitable outcomes through purposeful and personalised programmes

  • whānau, community and experts collaborating with the school to enrich a purposeful learning environment that supports learning and wellbeing

  • a school community who increasingly understand and live Te Tiriti o Waitangi obligations.

Strengths

The school can draw from the following strengths to evaluate how effectively they are achieving their strategic priorities:

  • a well-developed approach to effective internal evaluation

  • external and internal expertise to further build the capacity of the school to support and embed systems and processes for purposeful and personalised programmes for learning

  • a leadership team who prioritise a relational culture, collective responsibility for learning and a distributed model of leadership across the school

  • a learning environment that supports a personalised learning experience.

Where to next?

Moving forward, the school will prioritise:

  • growing the capacity of the school community to support ownership of learning by further developing and embedding the school’s agency, hauora, discovery and investigation capability progressions

  • living Te Tiriti o Waitangi to further connect as a community. This will be achieved by understanding and celebrating the community’s cultures, strengthening te reo Māori me ona tikanga across the school and implementing the Aotearoa histories curriculum, acknowledging mana whenua

  • collaborating with community and other experts to further promote wellbeing.

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.

Phil Cowie
Director Review and Improvement Services (Central)
Central Region | Te Tai Pūtahi Nui

29 November 2022 

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

Frankley School

Board Assurance with Regulatory and Legislative Requirements Report 2022 to 2025

As of August 2022, the Frankley School, 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 Frankley 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.

Phil Cowie
Director Review and Improvement Services (Central)
Central Region | Te Tai Pūtahi Nui

29 November 2022 

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

Frankley School - 22/05/2018

School Context

Frankley School caters for 203 students in Years 1 to 6, 15% of whom identify as Māori. The school is situated in a semi-rural setting on the outskirts of New Plymouth.

The school’s charter and curriculum articulate that valued outcomes for learners are to develop a range of skills, attitudes and attributes that encourage them to make a positive difference and to be a creative learner and effective communicator.

The school’s key aims and goals from 2018 include reviewing the charter and curriculum in consultation with the school’s community and raising literacy achievement for groups of learners in Years 1, 4 and 5.

Leaders and teachers regularly report to the board, schoolwide information about outcomes for students in the following areas:

  • student achievement in reading, writing and mathematics

  • attendance.

Since the March 2015 ERO report, the school has undergone some staffing changes, including the principal resigning at the end of 2017. At the time of this ERO evaluation a new principal had not yet been appointed.

Evaluation Findings

1 Equity and excellence – achievement of valued outcomes for students

1.1 How well is the school achieving equitable and excellent outcomes for all its students?

Leaders and teachers continue to strengthen systems and processes to achieve equitable achievement outcomes for all students.

The school’s analysed assessment information shows most students, including Māori and Pacific, achieve at or above school expectations in reading, writing and mathematics. There is disparity in achievement, with boys and Māori over represented in the lower achieving groups in literacy and mathematics for the past three years.

1.2 How well is the school accelerating learning for those Māori and other students who need this?

Leaders and teachers need to use analysed achievement data more efficiently to ensure Māori, and other learners who need to make accelerated progress, are better catered for.

The school’s 2017 data show some students, including Māori, made accelerated progress in reading, writing and mathematics.

2 School conditions for equity and excellence – processes and practices

2.1 What school processes and practices are effective in enabling achievement of equity and excellence, and acceleration of learning?

School leaders and staff promote a positive, inclusive school culture. Respectful learning partnerships between the school and families and whānau, support student achievement and wellbeing, especially for those at risk of underachieving.

S Leaders and teachers are reflective practitioners. They undertake research and build their understandings of current education practices aligned to the school’s strategic direction. Teachers use a range of strategies and deliberate actions to engage students in learning.chool processes result in effective collaborative practice.

Students with identified high or complex needs are very well supported. School personnel, external agencies, parents and whānau work collaboratively to support these learners. Good use is made of community resources. Individual plans identify actions for improved outcomes and track the implementation of plans to support these learners to actively engage in learning alongside their peers.

Whānau Māori are actively leading the inclusion of te ao Māori as a meaningful and integral part of the school’s localised curriculum.

2.2 What further developments are needed in school processes and practices for achievement of equity and excellence, and acceleration of learning?

Leaders and trustees are developing shared understanding of their roles in promoting equity and excellence. They need to build their individual and collective capability to lead effective internal evaluation practices. This should assist them to know what is working well in the school’s curriculum, define limitations and identify where further developments are necessary to improve outcomes.

Further development is required in some school processes to achieve equity and excellence, especially for boys and Māori in literacy and mathematics. These include:

  • revising annual achievement targets and tracking rates of progress of individuals and groups

  • improving assessment and moderation processes to ensure consistent, timely and dependable reporting of students’ progress and achievement to trustees, families and whānau

  • further improving processes that build teachers’ capability, including appraisal aligned to the school’s strategic aims and direction.

3 Board assurance on legal requirements

Before the review, the board 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
  • finance
  • 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 and certification
  • processes for appointing staff
  • stand down, suspension, expulsion and exclusion of students
  • attendance
  • school policies in relation to meeting the requirements of the Vulnerable Children Act 2014.

Areas for improved compliance practice

The board must implement a regular cycle of review of policies and procedures to ensure they remain fit for purpose and all requirements are met. In particular the appointments policy must reflect the requirements of the Vulnerable Children Act 2014 and school health and safety procedures must meet the requirements of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015.

4 Going forward

Key strengths of the school

For sustained improvement and future learner success, the school can draw on existing strengths in:

  • the positive organisational culture and inclusive practice

  • collaborative practice by leaders and teachers focused on improving outcomes for children.

Next steps

For sustained improvement and future learner success, priorities for further development are in:

  • targeted planning to accelerate learning for individual learners and achieve equity for all groups in the school [ERO will monitor and discuss progress with the school]

  • internal evaluation processes and practices that use data from a range of sources to better identify what is working well for students’ learning and where improvement is needed.

[ERO will provide an internal evaluation workshop for trustees and senior leaders]

ERO’s next external evaluation process and timing

ERO is likely to carry out the next external evaluation in three years.

Patricia Davey

Deputy Chief Review Officer Central (Acting)

Te Tai Pokapū - Central Region

22 May 2018

About the school

Location

New Plymouth

Ministry of Education profile number

2168

School type

Contributing (Years 1 to 6)

School roll

203

Gender composition

Female 53%, Male 47%

Ethnic composition

Māori 15%
Pākehā 72%
Tongan 2%
Other ethnic groups 11%

Provision of Māori medium education

No

Review team on site

March 2018

Date of this report

22 May 2018

Most recent ERO report(s)

Education Review March 2015
Education Review March 2012
Education Review January 2009