Taking Stock
Planning for the future requires ‘taking stock’
of the school's current performance. Boards, with
the principal and teachers, will need to gather and
analyse information about how all students are presently
achieving. You will need to identify characteristics
of the school that impact on student achievement such
as facilities, shared beliefs, core values, teaching
strengths and weaknesses, school/community relationships,
and community aspirations.
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What is working well in your school
now? How do you know?
What evidence have you gathered to establish
the current level of student achievement
in your school? How comprehensive is it?
How does the community (including, for
example, local iwi, local enterprise)
view your school? What steps did you take
to discover their views?
Where does the achievement of
your students fall short of your vision?
What aspects of student achievement are
not as good as they could be? Which students? In what areas?
How well could your students be
achieving?
What information do you have that enables
you to compare the achievements of your
students with other students nationally?
What do well-performing students in schools
similar to yours achieve?
What needs to be improved?
What other information do you need to
establish priorities for student and school
improvement?
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When considering a school's performance compared to the national picture it
is tempting to think of schools that do well and schools that do not. However,
the Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA) has shown that the
variation of student performance within schools is far greater than any variation
of average performance between schools. Indeed,
the range of student performance inside schools is greater in New Zealand than
in any other country that took part in the study. This analysis suggests that
there are students in every school whose outcomes could be improved.
Further Resources
Assessment
Community on TKI
New Zealand Education Snapshot:
This PDF contains John Hattie's presentation to the Knowledge Wave 2003
forum: 
New Zealand Education Snapshot
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Introduction | Next
Section: Setting Goals
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