Using Assessment and Mid-year Reporting

At Muritai we have been on a journey of self-review and reflection for some time now. We continue to use student achievement data to:

• Inform decision making and for strategic planning.
• Inform our teaching and learning programmes.
• Help develop each students understanding of what they are doing well, not so well and what their next learning steps will be.
  
• As a means of monitoring student progress against set expectations. (individual or groups)
  
• Support the schools commitment towards on-going self-review and raising student achievement.
  

Developing student awareness and understanding of their learning has been an area of focus for our school over the past 4-5 years. It supports the vision of the NZ curriculum in that we want our children to be confident, connected, actively involved and life-long learners; as well as the schools vision of 'being the best that you can be'. With our mid-year written reports due to go out in week 10 of this term, staff at Muritai are aware for the potential for getting caught up in the National Standards debate. Our priority for the mid-year report will be to use these as a vehicle for informing parents about their child's level of achievement, level of progress and next learning steps. The written reports will then be followed up by teacher-parent conferences the following week. Here teachers will be able to give greater meaning to the findings highlighted in the written report by talking through examples of work presented in the student portfolio. Although there has been much emphasis from the ministry on written reports being in 'plain language' this year, feedback from our community surveys suggest that the most useful means for developing an understanding of their child's learning comes from the parent-teacher conference.