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Going to school is critical for our children’s futures. The evidence is clear that every day of school matters, missing school leads to lower achievement.  In New Zealand, learners are expected to attend school every day the school is open. And yet many don’t. New Zealand has lower attendance than other countries and alarmingly attendance is falling.

This national report presents the findings of ERO’s recent evaluation of the practices used in an initiative to support the improved achievement of a specific group of Year 12 students.

This evaluation studies effective practice in schools’ senior curriculum. It contributes to the review being undertaken by the Ministry of Education (the Ministry) of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). The Ministry-led review focuses on the implementation of NCEA as the national assessment system for the senior years of secondary schooling. 

This national report is a companion report to Raising achievement in primary schools. It presents further findings of how some of the primary schools were using the Ministry-funded support projects - Accelerated Learning in Mathematics (ALiM) and Accelerated Learninig in Literacy (ALL) to accelerate progress and raise achievement.

This 2010 report evaluates how schools have promoted success for Māori students since ERO’s previous national report in 2006. The success of Māori students at school is a matter of national interest and priority. ERO has published five national evaluation reports on this topic since 2001. These have identified system-wide issues and recommended steps to be taken by schools and by the Ministry of Education to promote success for Māori in education.

The Prime Minister’s Youth Mental Health Project aims to improve the mental health of young people aged 12 to 19 years. One initiative of this project is a national evaluation of the current provision of guidance and counselling in schools.

The Education Review Office (ERO) evaluated how well 44 schools and five wharekura provided guidance and counselling for students.

ERO looked at how well the education system is supporting disabled learners in schools. This guide provides practical advice and real-life examples of good practice for teachers to support the inclusion and learning success of disabled learners at your school.

Receiving a quality education, from early childhood education (ECE) through to secondary school, positively affects how well all children and young people do at school and in life – from academic achievement and earning potential to health and wellbeing. Education is even more critical for disabled learners. When disabled learners receive a quality, inclusive education they are more likely to achieve better outcomes, to complete secondary schooling and to go on to further study and employment.

The Education Review Office (ERO) visited 12 schools to see how they were preparing their students as 21st century learners. Leaders were innovative, rethinking and transforming teaching and learning to equip students with the knowledge, skills and qualifications required for their future. In doing so, they also maximised learning opportunities offered by digital technology and flexible learning spaces.

This guide draws on findings from ERO’s report Long Covid: Ongoing impacts of Covid-19 on schools and learning, providing what we learned from surveying principals, teachers, and learners in 2023.

Since 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has caused significant disruption to schools, their staff, learners, and whānau. Three years on from the start of the pandemic, this report has found significant and concerning ongoing impacts on learners’ progress, particularly for learners in poorer communities, and on teachers and principals.

Going to school is critical for our children’s futures. The evidence is clear that every day of school matters – missing school leads to lower achievement. Aotearoa New Zealand has lower attendance than other countries and, alarmingly, attendance is falling. This short summary looks at some of the reasons why.

Children at many schools in New Zealand experience bullying. The Bullying Prevention Advisory Group, set up by the Secretary for Education, has developed a resource called Bullying prevention and response: A guide for schools.

ERO asked 129 schools reviewed during Term 3, 2014 about their use of the guide. Most schools were aware of the resource and more than a third had used it. Schools most commonly used the guide as a tool to review their bullying policies and procedures.

This report, Including Students with Special Needs: school questionnaire responses presents the findings from a questionnaire completed by schools reviewed in the first two terms of 2011. It is based on schools’ own views of how well they include children with special needs.

In 2008 the Education Review Office evaluated schools’ provision for gifted and talented students.

School boards of trustees, through their principals and staff, are required to use good quality assessment information to identify students who have special needs (including gifted and talented), and to develop and implement teaching and learning strategies to meet the needs of these students.

A group of schools was particularly effective in providing for gifted and talented students and ERO has set out their good practice in this report.

This report discusses the quality of education at the nine Child Youth and Family (CYF) residential schools. These schools provide education for the young people in New Zealand's Youth Justice and Care and Protection services.The Education Review Office found that the quality of education across most of the CYF schools was not of a consistently high standard. Most of these schools need to make improvements in the delivery of the curriculum, the planning and programme design for individual students, and the processes to transition students to further education, training or employment.

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.

ERO has a comprehensive and fast-tracked work programme underway to understand the ongoing impact of Covid-19 on students, services and schools, and on teaching and learning in Aotearoa New Zealand in the English and Māori medium education sectors.

ERO evaluated the quality of education at the Child Youth and Family (CYF) residential schools. CYF residential schools provide education for young people in Youth Justice and Care and Protection services. 

This report gives a snapshot of the current provision of te reo Māori teaching and learning in a representative sample of English-medium primary and secondary schools. The education sector is seen as an important lever in the Government’s Maihi Karauna strategy for language revitalisation.