During term one staff undertook a review of our student reporting formats and processes.

Our thinking was focussed on how we might support attainment of two of our annual goals in particular:

Annual Goal 1: To enhance staff and student wellbeing
Annual Goal 2: Increase community engagement

Our view was that our current reporting might now be adapted to better suit the ways in which we operate. We felt that there were opportunities to make reporting even more relevant and useful for students and whānau by reducing production times and by making reports more immediate in nature, while also reducing staff workload.

We were also mindful that term 2, 2018, will be an exceptional time when the entire fabric of the school will be disrupted in a way that will not likely be repeated in our lifetimes (natural disasters excepted), as almost the entire school shifts physical locations to occupy stage 1 of our rebuilt facilities.

To these ends we decided that there are some short term changes we will make to student reporting for 2018. We will also be taking a longer term look at the frequency and content of our reports. This view will likely involve much more significant changes that require significant work on the school’s student management system which holds the data and generates the reports. The technical work required in this regard will take longer to complete.

The short term changes we are proposing were presented to a focus group of 9 parents, and their feedback was added to that from staff in order to produce our 2018 reporting plan. This plan contains significant compromises required mostly because of the disruptive nature of the school rebuild.

Key changes:

1. Creation of a new ‘School Values’ report that reports student work against our values of Commitment, Achievement, Resilience, and Respect. Initially this will come out once or twice per term, but included in our thinking is an increase in frequency to three times per term from 2019. You received your first of these at the end of term 1.

2. A simplified full report that will not only report achievement (as required under the National Administration Guideline 2(c)), but will also more usefully give specific guidance on ‘next steps’ for each student (that is, what they have to do next to improve academic achievement).

3. An increased focus on Learning Conferences, including a shift in emphasis to conferences lead by students. This will be phased in over time across year levels.

Our 2018 reports involve (as mentioned) some compromises. The senior full reports this term will only report achievement data, and reporting against the school values. We are also of necessity shifting our normal term 2 learning conferences to early in term 3 to accommodate the disruption of our impending shift.

So, to some degree 2018 is a slightly muddly year, but we expect 2019 to look much more normal, with some new report formats and timings in place. Feedback on these things is always appreciated.

Ngā mihi nui

Robin Sutton

Principal