Since the early 1990s a key management function in all New Zealand schools has been to review school-wide curriculum programmes for purposes of reporting student achievement and developing school effectiveness. Rapid reform under Tomorrow's Schools, including the dismantling of traditional support structures, meant that efforts by schools to develop review systems were often fragmentary. The Education Standards Act (2001) introduced stricter requirements for strategic planning and the reporting of school-wide achievement data linked to specific learning targets. Recently, the Ministry of Education's National Assessment Strategy directed schools to apply questions about student assessment at the strategic level in order to lift achievement of the entire student body (MOE, 2005; McMahon, 2002).
This Probe study describes a model of school-wide curriculum review developed at Ashburton Borough School. The report describes early initiatives to devise school-wide review procedures and the critical decision to adopt NEMP as a model for conducting review and a source of data for making judgements about student achievement.
The Ashburton Borough School model, operating since 1999, works in a four year cycle. In each year two essential learning areas are reviewed and developed. The review phase centres on the analysis of student achievement data. For this purpose a cross-section of Y4 and Y8 students are tested using NEMP items. Results from Ashburton Borough students are compared with NEMP's nationwide data.
This NEMP-based review model is used primarily to direct staff professional development programmes at Ashburton Borough School. Significant differences between the performance of our own students and students tested by NEMP become the focus for staff discussion and development. Using well-sourced data as the basis for making judgements about our teaching and learning programmes improves the quality of professional discourse. Early results from our second cycle of review suggest that highly targeted professional development activities have succeeded in reducing specific gaps in student achievement. This is discussed in the report with reference to mathematics programmes.
The development of our curriculum review model drew strongly on research about school effectiveness; particularly the work of Sergiovanni, Fullan, Leithwood and others which demonstrates that student achievement is improved when a school becomes an organisation where all members are actively engaged in learning. Stewart & Prebble's ideas about continuous school development led us towards a holistic model of school management that integrates curriculum review, professional development and staff appraisal programmes.
This Probe study is intended as a practical resource, a guide to conducting effective school-wide review using NEMP as the basis for making judgements about student achievement. Readers seeking further information are encouraged to contact the author.