ERO: One in five schools need help
Also, nearly half ECE services visited breached regulatory or licensing criteria
One in five schools needs intensive help and only 15 per cent have effective teaching firmly established, the Education Review Office says. It also warned nearly half the early childhood services it visited in the past financial year breached regulatory or licensing criteria.
The Education Review Office’s (ERO) annual report for 2021-22 said 30 per cent of schools it reviewed were in the “foundation” stage of establishing effective teaching, meaning they had a low level of maturity in that area.
About half of the country’s schools had been reviewed using a new system of more frequent visits and only one in four had the conditions for sustaining high performance, it said.
“Approximately 20 per cent of schools in this group have been judged as requiring intensive effort across multiple domains to bring about improved learner outcomes,” the report said.
The 2018-19 annual report said 18 per cent needed intensive help.
ERO deputy chief executive for review and improvement Jane Lee said schools were generally doing well and the figures were comparable to previous years.
Lee said the responsibility for improving schools was shared across multiple agencies including ERO and was not a problem for teachers and principals to deal with on their own.
The pandemic had affected teaching and learning but schools had been very innovative in finding ways of keeping children engaged in learning, she said.
Secondary Principals Association president Vaughan Couillault said he was not surprised the number of schools in need of extra help had not improved because the pandemic had made it harder for schools to get support.
Approximately 20 per cent of schools in this group have been judged as requiring intensive effort across multiple domains.
ERO report
Principals Federation president Cherie Taylor-Patel said a contributing factor was that most principals were relatively new to the job.
“Sixty per cent of school leaders have been principals for five years or less and if you think about that, for three of those years they’ve been coping with a pandemic where there was no guidebook to help them through,” she said.
ERO manager of methodology Sandra Collins said the office was concerned about the level and nature of non-compliance in early childhood services.
The annual report said analysis of 541 reports found reviewers spotted problems with one or more licensing criteria at 41 per cent of the services they visited.
ERO reports had not previously noted regulatory breaches if they were rectified before the report was completed, Collins said.
There were four regulatory standards and 97 licensing criteria which included things like managing hazards, she said.
The report said the most common areas of non-compliance included safety and hazard checking, emergency drills, excursions, and securing heavy furniture.