Our research

Driven by the conviction that everybody can achieve, leaders and teachers seek to overcome barriers to equity and excellence experienced by individual students at McAuley High School.

The deputy principal at Kerikeri High School describes the process the school leaders went through to develop electronic systems and processes to track student academic success. The principal describes how the tracking tool alerted school leaders when students were at risk of not achieving and led them to consider ways to ensure students had further opportunities to succeed.

At McAuley High School, the use of student achievement data and other evidence is the catalyst for determining who needs to be part of the discussion to seek solutions and establish next steps.

At McAuley High School, classroom teacher observations are a frequent occurrence and students report how they regard this as teachers actively modelling learning behaviour.

At Otumoetai Intermediate, all teachers are engaged in differentiated professional learning and development. Those with similar goals are ‘buddied’ with another staff member.

In improving the teaching and learning of mathematics, leaders and teachers are working to develop safe, collaborative environments where every learner (teachers and students) can access the thinking of others to strengthen their knowledge and understanding.

Clarity of expectations within a supportive environment are key to scaffolding children into the behaviours of effective learners. Those expectations are realised through structures and processes that ensure everyone knows what to do to achieve success.

The team structure in this school supports the professional learning and development of leaders and teachers. Team members discuss their roles, responsibilities and the reciprocal nature of their interactions.

This guide to using internal evaluation for improvement purposes is published jointly by ERO and the Ministry of Education as a companion to School Evaluation Indicators: Effective Practice for Improvement and Learner Success and is supported by Internal Evaluation: Good Practice.

This report presents examples of good practice in student engagement and achievement. The examples come from a sample of secondary schools, rated decile 5 or below with rolls of 200 students or more, who had better outcomes for students than other similar schools. ERO visited seven of these schools to find out the secret to their success.

This good practice report presents examples from five early childhood services where priorities for children’s learning were well considered and reflected on.

This is the first in a series of evaluations related to principal and teacher appraisal in New Zealand schools. These evaluations are intended to provide information to help boards and school leaders strengthen appraisal practice and links with school development to improve outcomes for their students.

ERO has released a series of reports about the National Standards since their introduction in 2010. This latest report focuses on eight schools that are working well with the standards. 

In 2011, ERO evaluated the quality of science teaching and learning, its place within the curriculum and its relationship to literacy and numeracy teaching. The evaluation focused on Years 5 to 8 in 100 schools. This report documents the findings of this evaluation.

The intent of the evaluation was to gain an insight and understanding of literacy teaching and learning in early childhood education. This report complements the ERO national evaluation report, Literacy in Early Childhood: Teaching and Learning, February 2011. It presents examples of good practice from 13 early childhood services, identified during their ERO reviews, which had high quality literacy teaching and learning. ERO revisited these services in Term 4, 2010.

This Education Review Office report provides schools and policy makers with examples of how 10 New Zealand secondary schools successfuly support boys' education. The schools in this study were selected on the basis of their good overall levels of student achievement, previous positive ERO reports and their well-developed pastoral care and support strategies. Five boys' schools and five coeducational schools are used as case studies

ERO evaluated the collection and use of assessment information in schools in 2006. The evaluation concluded that more work can be done to improve assessment practice in schools. This report builds on this finding by giving examples of good practice in the collection and use of assessment information in primary schools. The report also includes three detailed case studies.