The recent NCEA results show hard work and new learning strategies are paying offl for Auckland’s low-decile schools Striding towards success
Alot can happen in a year. Just ask Vaughan Couillault, principal of James Cook High School, which was labelled “worst school in Auckland” for 2014 and is now among the top performers in the newly released NCEA results.
“It is a long road and we are not done yet,” Mr Couillault says. “But it is inspiring. Every day. Because of the work that our students and all our staff are doing.”
James Cook, a co-ed decile one school in Manurewa, has achieved some of the most impressive improvement rates in Auckland across all NCEA levels. At level one, for example, it had a year-on-year increase of 25.2 per cent to see 95.3 per cent of students pass the standard. At Level 2, 89.8 per cent passed. And at Level 3, there was a 26.7 per cent increase to 80.7 achievement.
To put things in context, nationally around 85 per cent of learners achieve at Level 1, while at Level 2, considered the “benchmark” for secondary learning, 86.8 per cent of students passed in 2014.
Mr Couillault, who joined the school in 2012, says the results are indicative of serious amounts of work from teaching and support staff, who deal with kids who come to the school usually well below standard.
“At year nine, our kids are up to four years below where they should be,” he says. “And it takes a lot of hard yakka to help them from there.”
If he could point to one strategy that’s help lift results, Mr Couillault says it would be embracing Te Kotahitangi, a programme that supports Maori learning in a culturally sensitive way.
“We’ve made huge changes in our teaching approach, particularly around relationships with kids,” he says.
“It’s understanding them as people. The kids need to know that you care before they care about what you know.”
He says while it works for everyone, it is particularly effective with Maori students.
“It’s about making a real effort to know our learners. Not about just standing up the front. But any teacher worth their salt will be doing that.”
They also collect “hard core” data, and can make changes on almost a daily basis around what is and isn’t working, he says.
Like any decile one school, many of the issues James Cook faces aren’t around learning. There’s hunger, cold, truancy, transience and a lack of precedence when it comes to highlevel education.
In particular, the school battles to keep kids at school after they’re 16.
“Retention is always difficult to change in an area where there is intergenerational poverty,” Mr Couillault says.
“As you become of an employable age it is expected that an income be made. So poverty really does provide a barrier to accessing education.”
For this year, the school plans to build on the efforts its put in in the past three years. Ideally, pass rates will lift further, Mr Couillault says.
“We want to keep that wagon rolling.”