Category: Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

The Education Review Office is introducing a colour-coded, four-point scale for rating schools’ performance.

It said the new system would apply to ERO review reports for schools visited from term two and would be easier for families to understand.

The new-look reports would rate schools’ as excelling, doing well, working towards or requiring improvement across 14 areas with colour coding of dark green, light green, orange, and red.

The reports would start with a “snapshot” table showing the number of areas in which each school was excelling, doing well, working towards, or required improvement.

They would then provide an overview of the school’s ratings in 14 areas including student achievement, student progress, teaching, reading and writing, maths and attendance.

ERO said the new reports would be easier for families to understand.

ERO last changed the way it reported on schools at the end of 2024 when it introduced short descriptions of performance in areas including how well learners were succeeding and the quality of teaching.

It also introduced brief outlines of schools’ performance in reading, writing, maths and attendance.

England’s school reviewer, Ofsted, recently introduced a colour-coded, five-point scale for schools’ performance in areas including attendance, behavour, acheivement, and personal development.

The scale was exceptional, strong standard, expected standard, needs attention, and urgent improvement with colour-coding ranging from blue, through green to orange and red.

Education Minister Erica Stanford said the new reports would provide parents with clearer, more useful information.

“To date, reports on school performance through ERO have not sufficiently focused on the details most relevant to parents and have been dense and complicated to read and understand,” she said.

Stanford said the reports would provide more detail on twice as many topics.

“The new reports will recognise successes as well and provide a roadmap for improvement. They focus on the key changes that will make the most difference for students,” she said.

Stanford said the reports would help the Education Ministry target support to the schools that needed it.

“Overall this is really about good data and making sure that we are targeting resource to the areas we need it the most so we can raise achievement standards across the board,” she said.

She said the review office had not changed how it reviewed schools, just how it reported its findings.

Chief review officer Ruth Shinoda said parents did not understand some of the language ERO used.

“Sometimes words are clear to us but not clear to schools and parents,” she said.

“For example, the word ’embedding’, which is one of our judgements – it means a lot to us in education, parents have no idea what this word means so we’ve changed it to ‘doing well’.”

Shinoda said a focus on progress would celebrate the difference schools made in challenging circumstances.

She said the reports would show how many areas a school was excelling in, how many areas it was good at, and how many it needed to improve.

They would also provide more clarity about what schools needed to do next.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand