The Education Review Office acknowledged the concern, and told RNZ it was particularly important people read the full reports of schools in poor communities and not base judgments just on the tables.<\/p>\n
Westlake Girls\u2019 High School was among the first schools to receive one of the new reports.<\/p>\n
Its table was mostly dark-green squares, with some light green and one orange, meaning the school was \u201cexcelling\u201d in most areas, \u201cdoing well\u201d in others and \u201cworking towards\u201d in just one area \u2013 attendance.<\/p>\n
Principal Jane Stanley said it provided a better overall picture of the school\u2019s performance than previous reports \u2013 but only if people read the full document.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s certainly much more comprehensive than the previous ones were, and I think gives a really good picture of the school and what\u2019s going well, and things that might need to be added to or improved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stanley said many parents would likely only read as far as the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a really short summary of the work behind the full report. <\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, people will probably go to that, and be drawn to that and not read behind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beaconsfield School, near Timaru, also received one of the new reports. Its table was mostly light-green squares, plus some dark green and two orange \u2013 for attendance and school governance.<\/p>\n
Principal Hamish Brown says the table said a lot, but it did not tell the full story.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe boxes are okay,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019ve indicated what they\u2019ve found, but there\u2019s two steps behind those boxes and we feel that anybody reading it is not going to go deeper into the report.\u201d<\/p>\n
For example, he said Beaconsfield received an orange rating for governance, because the school board had three new members, not because of any particular problem.<\/p>\n
As for attendance, Brown said, with 120 pupils, a small number of children could have a big effect on the school\u2019s percentages.<\/p>\n
Brown said he knew other schools were apprehensive about the new reports.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a bit of nervousness simply because it is very black and white, and sometimes communities, local people, papers, local media like to grab the short story without getting the full story.\u201d<\/p>\n
New Zealand Principals\u2019 Federation president Jason Miles said the tables were confronting and could be misleading if people didn\u2019t read the rest of the report.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is very easy for someone to look at those colour ratings, without reading the details behind it to get a certain impression of some schools,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said the federation was worried that the attendance rating in particular was more a reflection of a school\u2019s socio-economic status than how good the school was.<\/p>\n
\u201cA school that may have had 40% attendance and worked really hard to increase it to 60%, but will still be marked in the \u2018working towards\u2019 area, rather than be rated on the hard work and support that they\u2019ve put in to raising that attendance.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Education Review Office understood the concern that some people may look only at the colour-coded snapshot.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe snapshot is only one part of the report,\u201d it said. \u201cIt is designed to help parents and wh\u0101nau navigate the report, not replace the full report.\u201d<\/p>\n
The office said reading the full report was particularly important for schools serving communities with high levels of need.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere a school is making strong progress from a low base, or where teaching and leadership are effective, that will be recognised in the report,\u201d it said. <\/p>\n
\u201cEach judgment is supported by narrative commentary explaining what the school is doing well, where improvement is needed and what actions will support better outcomes for learners.\u201d<\/p>\n
It said the purpose of the reports was to support school improvement, and the changes were aimed at making reports clearer, more accessible and easier for parents, wh\u0101nau, schools and boards to use.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will continue to listen to feedback from schools, parents and wh\u0101nau as the new reports are used, so that our reporting remains clear, useful and centred on learners.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe acknowledge that it will take time for people to adjust to the new format.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Education Review Office acknowledged the concern, and told RNZ it was particularly important people read the full…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[264048,71,44248,1333,5126,12235,1304,111,43,139,69,14726,1560,766,763,45,4062,264047],"class_list":["post-535544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-colourcoded","tag-from","tag-gerritsen","tag-get","tag-john","tag-mixed","tag-morning","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-principals","tag-report","tag-reports","tag-reviews","tag-rnz","tag-school","tag-simplistic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}