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This short report, aimed at secondary school leaders, sets out how prepared students and schools felt ahead of the Covid-19 lockdown in August and provides recommendations for how schools can support their students as they return to the classroom. 

This guide is for school leaders who have, or are considering referring learners to Alternative Education.

This guide for boards draws on findings from ERO’s report Starting School Together: What Do We Know? and provides insights from schools that have changed to cohort entry. 

Traditionally, children in Aotearoa start school on their firth birthday or any school day after that. Recent changes to the Education Act mean schools can now adopt cohort entry: enrolling children in groups on specific days across the year. Schools are choosing cohort entry to support positive transitions, wellbeing, and learning.

To support leaders and teachers to review and strengthen the science learning opportunities they provide, ERO explored the strategies and approaches that a selection of schools had taken to increase students’ engagement in science. This short guides draws on this work to help primary school leaders think about how they can support stronger science teaching and learning in their school.

There are a small number of schools in New Zealand that are failing to provide students with equitable access to high-quality learning experiences. Students within these schools are not achieving expected academic outcomes.

Despite longitudinal reviews by the Education Review Office (ERO) and support from the Ministry of Education (The Ministry), some of these schools continue to make limited progress or may experience further decline.  The ERO and the Ministry identified the need for a different approach.

Disabled learners have the right to enrol and receive a quality, inclusive education at their local school. When disabled learners receive a quality, inclusive education they are more likely to achieve better outcomes, are more likely to complete secondary schooling and to go on to further study and employment. This study looked at how well the education system is supporting disabled learners. It found we need to improve education for disabled learners so they can thrive.

Starting school is a major childhood event. It can be an exciting time for children and their families. But it is a big change and can be an uncertain time. Since 2018, schools have been able to have children start in groups at certain dates during the year. This is called cohort entry. ERO found that cohort entry has a range of benefits for children’s wellbeing and learning, schools’ ability to structure transitions more easily, and for teachers due to fewer disruptions and more time to teach.

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.

Starting school is a major childhood event. It can be an exciting time for children and their families. But it is a big change, and so it can also be an uncertain time. A good start at school sets children up to succeed at school. We looked to see how changing to cohort entry impacts on children, their peers, and whānau, as well as their schools and early childhood education services.

In Aotearoa, children have usually started school on their fifth birthday. These days, that’s not always the case. Since 2018, schools have had the option of cohort entry, where small groups of children start school together, at particular points during the year. This can change how children transition through an early learning service.

This evaluation report illustrates the leadership domain of ERO’s School Evaluation Indicators in practice by:

ERO looked at how education is meeting the needs of learners from ethnic communities and how schools can embrace increasing ethnic diversity. In this guide we share findings from our research, as well some practical things that school leaders and teachers can do to support better inclusion of learners from ethnic communities.