The new requirements: a summary
From the beginning of the 2003 school year, each school must revise its charter to include longer term strategic goals for student achievement and annually updated targets for improving student outcomes. The board of trustees must also include in their annual report a review of progress towards the targets identified in the charter.
The new legislation also requires each school to lodge with the Ministry of Education a copy of their charter, as annually updated, and a copy of the board of trustees' annual report, as they already do with their annual financial report.
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Why have these changes been made?
These changes to planning and reporting requirements have been made to help schools achieve the two essential education goals of:
- continuous improvements in education outcomes for students;
- reduced disparity between our highest and lowest achievers.
The changed requirements will contribute to these goals by:
- cementing into each school's culture and day-to-day operations a self-review process focused on ongoing improvement of students' educational outcomes;
- ensuring that schools' planning priorities are based on evaluating sound evidence of student achievement in order to improve outcomes for underachieving students or groups of students;
- increasing the flow of meaningful information between schools and communities;
- improving the range and quality of information about education outcomes to help the government evaluate the effectiveness of education policies.
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Will these changes involve extra work?
Each school currently has a charter and a strategic plan and also prepares an annual operational plan. In other words, schools already plan for their distant and near future. In many cases, the only addition to this paperwork will be for the school to bring together its current charter, strategic plan, annual plan, and budget to form the new charter. Some schools may need to fine-tune the coherence of their new charter and sharpen its focus on student outcomes.
Since the introduction of Tomorrow's Schools in 1989, boards have been required to prepare and make available an annual report and an annual financial report. The only thing that changes under the new policy is the focus on student outcomes. Under the new policy, schools need to comment explicitly in their annual report on their progress towards their charter targets for improvement. The following example of such a comment shows that it need not require much extra time and effort.
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Target
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Outcome
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Analysis
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By the end of year 7, at least 60% of boys will be reading at or above the reading level for their age.
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Of the year 7 boys, 55% are reading at or above their age level. One boy gained four years!
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Good progress! As the interventions in years 4 to 6 flow through, we expect
to improve further. Next year...
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What should we plan to achieve?
Each school will identify its own priorities for improvement, based on evaluation of its own data. Information gathered at a classroom level will tell principals and boards where students are not doing well enough and, therefore, what issues they must plan to address. The students' performance and needs must drive management decisions.
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Do we have to report standard data in a prescribed way?
No. Each school will identify and state its own specific target or targets that will help it to achieve its strategic goals for improved student outcomes. Each year, through their charters, schools will provide their communities with information about these targets and how they intend to achieve them. Subsequently, schools will review and report progress towards the outcomes and targets they planned to achieve.
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What about "national priorities"?
Each school is responsible for contributing to the achievement of national education goals, such as eliminating underachievement and improving students' literacy and numeracy skills. In the strategic planning part of its charter, each school will show how it is addressing such goals. If a school's progress in these areas is satisfactory, it may set strategic goals and targets in quite different areas.
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Why disclose plans and reports to the community?
Schools are accountable to parents for meeting the education needs of their children. Disclosing plans and reporting on progress is one way for the school to give its community confidence in the quality of education that the school is providing. Comprehensive sharing of aspirations, expectations, and achievements helps to improve the quality of dialogue between home and school, to develop the community's understanding of what their school is doing, and to build parents' engagement with the school and in their children's education.
Our common goal is to raise student achievement through high-quality planning in an environment of trust and accountability.
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How does the new policy relate to the National Assessment policy?
The key idea in the National Assessment policy is the importance of collecting high-quality information about students' achievement in order to make better decisions about their next steps in learning. At school level, the planning and reporting policy reinforces this key idea by requiring schools to use their achievement data to identify their students' needs and to evaluate school-wide progress. Nationally, the government analyses schools' data to help evaluate progress towards education goals.
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Will the National Administration Guidelines (NAGs) be changed?
The new legislation changes the nature of the NAGs. They are no longer "deemed to be part of the charter". Rather, the NAGs are now truly "guidelines" that identify what national priorities and responsibilities schools should address in their charters, planning, and self-review.
The NAGS, as revised in November 1999 and implemented in 2000, identified important societal priorities that have not changed. These are the "national priorities" identified in the legislation.
In sum, the way the NAGs work has changed and the way they will look is being changed, but there is no change to the important societal responsibilities that the NAGs previously identified.
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Is there a template to fill out?
There is not a required template to fill out, but there is help available in this area. The Ministry does not want to encourage a culture of compliance for compliance's sake, which can sometimes result from having to fill in a template devised for someone else's purposes.
School planning and reporting processes are intended to guide and inform each school and its community. The Ministry wants schools to think about their own issues and risks, to plan to deal with these, and to report on how they are managing them. The Ministry will collect only the charter and reports that each school already prepares for its own guidance and information purposes.
To help the Ministry analyse schools' charter plans and reports, we will ask schools to classify each target they set by noting which curriculum area, which level of students, and which specific student group, if any, the target deals with.
To help schools with the process of preparing charters and reports, the Ministry has worked with a development group of school principals, management advisers, and board of trustee representatives to create the Thinking Template. This tool, which has been trialled by over 120 schools, will be distributed to all schools by August 2002. The development group is also considering providing a means within the Thinking Template for constructing charters and reports, which any school may use if they so wish.
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Why does the Ministry need any of this information?
Analysis of the data provided by schools will tell the Ministry how effective its curriculum, regulatory, and resourcing policies are in terms of their impact on student outcomes. The Ministry will look for trends in what the school system is really good at and what still needs improvement. This analysis will inform reviews of policies and decisions about students and/or schools in need of extra help.
The government is accountable to the public for what is being done to prepare for the New Zealand of the future and for what the community is getting in return for its tax dollars. Your reports will help the Ministry to make the processes and outcomes of schooling more visible to the communities that pay for them.
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Who in the Ministry is going to read all this data?
The Ministry is appointing staff in its regional offices to monitor schools' plans and reports and to support schools in planning for improvement. Nevertheless, no one person will sit down and read every charter and annual report. We will ask you to send in copies of your charters and reports electronically. Electronic data management gives the Ministry options for analysis not readily available to one person reading each school's paperwork. We will be able to retrieve any school's data quickly for analysis. We can study related plans and reports, for example, from schools of a particular decile or from schools planning to target a particular curriculum area.
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When do schools have to meet the new requirements?
The new charter planning and reporting requirements begin with the 2003 school year. In 2003, each school's charter will need to include its goals and targets for that year, and its report on the 2003 year will need to provide the school's evaluation of its progress towards the targets.
Report the outcomes to the community and the Ministry.
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Identify areas of strength and weakness.
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Share these plans
with the community.
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Plan to build on the strengths and address the weaknesses.
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Charter
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Mission, values, community values. How the school contributes to societal goals. How the school meets the needs and expectations of its Māori community.
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Three- to five-year strategic goals and plans for our school.
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Annual curriculum, operational, and financial plan and targets for student outcomes.
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Annual report
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Enquiries to the Ministry are welcome by:
Additional copies of Sharpening the Focus 8 are available free on request from Learning Media Customer Services, freephone 0800 800 565, freefax 0800 800 570, email: orders@learningmedia.co.nz
Published 2002 for the Ministry of Education by Learning Media Limited, Box
3293, Wellington, New Zealand. Website: www.learningmedia.co.nz
Copyright © Crown 2002. All rights reserved. Enquiries should be
made to the publisher. Item number 10420.
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Issue 10
This issue of Sharpening the Focus outlines the support available to schools and teachers as they address the need for students to develop high levels of competence (knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values) in physical education and physical activity. It also includes the amended sections relating to physical activity in the National Education Goals (NEGs) and National Administration Guidelines (NAGs).
Issue 9
This issue of Sharpening the Focus outlines support that is available for schools in addressing the needs of their gifted and talented students.
Issue 8
This issue of Sharpening the Focus,
is a newsletter for boards of trustees, principals, and teachers on
school management and administration.
Issue
7
This issue
of Sharpening the Focus looks at the intent and effect of the Education
Standards Act 2001, which has introduced the requirement that every school's
charter include planning for improvement of student outcomes.
Issue
6
This issue of Sharpening the Focus discusses the National
Education Guidelines' requirement for boards of trustees to identify
and provide for students who have special needs related to disabilities,
learning difficulties, and behavioural problems. It also answers
some frequently asked questions.
Issue
5
This
issue of Sharpening the Focus looks more closely at the relationship between
the revised National Administration Guideline 2 and professional development
and answers some frequently asked questions.
Issue
4
This issue of
Sharpening the Focus looks more closely at the requirements that the revised
National Administration Guideline 2 places on schools as they undertake
strategic planning.
Issue
3
This
issue of Sharpening the Focus looks more closely at what schools will
need to consider as they align their curriculum and assessment policies
and practices to the revised National Administration Guidelines 1 and
2.
Issue
2
This
issue includes information on Kia mahitahi - working together, Frequently
Asked Questions, and Better Relationships for Better Learning.
Issue
1
This newsletter
backgrounds the recent revision of the National Education Guidelines,
outlines the help to be offered to schools as they adjust to the new
requirements, and answers some frequently asked questions.
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