Setting Goals

Case Study – Onehunga High School

"Every decision we make here is to do with student achievement"

Onehunga High School

Onehunga High School is over 40 years old and is about to have a $4.5 million modernisation of the Nelson-plan campus, which accommodates around 1500 mainly Māori and Pacific students.

A spiral-bound folder of property project plans and specifications is at Chris Saunders' elbow as he sits at his desk.

"Yes, our property decisions too are decidedly about achievement. This redevelopment is about creating the environments and plant to produce learning outcomes," he said.

"We believe in quality learning out of quality environments – and that will include heat, light, humidity, shade, and ceiling fans."

Onehunga High was setting its 2002 objectives in October 2001. They were likely to revolve around implementing the NCEA, improving literacy, and setting up a coordinated extension programme for higher achieving students.

"Our board of trustees is really into it, setting goals every year for better achievement."

"We want to embed good literacy practice, stick with the NCEA – our 2001 goal on this worked superbly – and keep lifting Māori and Pacific achievement. We're having a three year run at that last goal," said Chris Saunders.

One of their 2001 school objectives "didn't work".

"We're not serving our students who score in the 65-70% area well enough. We'll probably reset our 2001 learning extension goal for 2002."

The new goals were out for discussion by all teachers in their subject departments and would return from there to Chris Saunders to be passed to the board of trustees.

How does Onehunga High School know what the issues are and whether their goals are being achieved?

"Polynesian boys are a given. We don't need original data to know that their achievement needs to lift. We have national statistics such as the number leaving year 13 with qualifications, School Certificate results; plus our PAT scores and exam pass rates."

Onehunga is using its own English results to assess the success of its school-wide literacy programme and will adapt the literacy strategy once the data is in, for 2002. School Certificate English and Mathematics scores are being used to track the Māori and Pacific achievement initiative.

"Every department has to measure programmes, and track achievement, in their subject each year; and one of the deputy principals has a marks collection role," said Chris Saunders.

Onehunga does not use external evaluators, but the principal would like to. "We should, but we'd have to pay. External evaluation every five years by the Review Office is not enough."

Rigorous self-review is very much part of the culture. The board has a Policy and Self-Review Committee. School self-review is an annual event at Onehunga, closely linked to staff appraisal.

Each department reviews its achievements against the school goals, and teachers are encouraged to build the school annual goals into their own individual professional objectives.

The other key element is professional development. "You must have a PD culture or you're doomed," said Chris Saunders. He is a strong advocate for the weekly early morning staff professional development hour at his school.

Chris Saunders is pleased with the directions and progress of Onehunga High School: directions indicated by the annual goal setting process and the uptake of those goals by the board, departments, and individual staff; progress measured by annual self-review and appraisal.

"We're doing really well on any measure, but there's certainly a lot of improvement we can make yet."

What evidence or data have you been gathering to support your planning and decision making?

"We use PAT results - especially a comparison of the same group from year 9–10. We also use the external exam results (School Certificate and Bursary). I imagine that with NCEA we will examine percentages of students who gain each achievement standard, e.g. in English 1:1 Creative writing, we have had a 53% pass rate (standard achieved or higher). This is encouraging for the teaching of that standard."

How is data collected and used?

"PATs are collected yearly. At the moment one person collects and records the data but our system will allow each teacher to record the data next year. This is better because then the teacher has access to the information generated. School Certificate and Bursary results are collected annually by the departments to use as part of their self-review process and also by senior management who use and report the data in a variety of ways, e.g. measure of performance of different ethnic groups. NCEA will give us the opportunity to collect and record data during the year. This has real advantages for departmental planning and evaluation."

"I believe that data is most valuable when it supports other evidence such as classroom teachers' anecdotal evidence. I would not like to use data as the only measure because other factors can influence data."

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