ERO Report

Arohanui Special School

09 Apr 2024

Te Ara Huarau | School Profile Report 

Background 

This Profile Report was written within six months of the Education Review Office and ​Arohanui Special School​ working in Te Ara Huarau, an improvement evaluation approach used in English Medium State and State Integrated Schools. For more information about Te Ara Huarau see ERO’s website. www.ero.govt.nz 

This report is part of a nationally coordinated evaluation of 27-day specialist schools during the second half of 2023. This included the development of day specialist school evaluation indicators by ERO with significant input from principals, staff and the Special Education Principals’ Association of New Zealand (SEPAnz). 

Context  

Arohanui Special School is in Waitakere, Auckland. It provides education for ākonga eligible for Ongoing Resourcing Scheme (ORS) with intellectual disabilities aged between the ages of five to 21 years. The school has a base school and 16 satellite classes situated in local host schools and a transition centre for students aged 18 years and over.  

The school employs a specialist therapy team that includes speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, and behaviour specialists, who support the learning of students. A specialist teacher outreach service works with ORS funded students enrolled in local schools. 

The school continues to navigate and manage roll growth pressures along with the employment and property demands associated with this. 

The school’s whākatauki is 'Ko te ahurei o te tamaiti arahia ō tātou māhi - Let the uniqueness of the child guide our work’. The school’s vision is, ‘dedicated to meeting the diverse needs of their community in the spirit of aroha’. 

​​Arohanui Special School​’s strategic priorities for improving outcomes for ākonga are:  

• to grow students by empowering them to reach their full potential as agentic learners 

• to grow staff by growing and developing our collective understanding of students’ personalised learning pathways 

• to grow community by creating mutually beneficial partnerships.
  You can find a copy of the school’s strategic and annual plan on ​Arohanui Special School​’s website. 

ERO and the school are working together to evaluate how effectively literacy and communication tools, and the school’s teaching and learning approaches empower ākonga to have agency to be successful and reach their potential.  

The rationale for selecting this evaluation is to:  

• increase ākonga capability in literacy and communication  

• provide consistent schoolwide teaching and learning approaches in literacy and communication. 

The school expects to see ākonga confident in their communication skills and engaged in a range of relevant effective literacy programmes. 

Strengths  

The school can draw from the following strengths to support in its goal to evaluate how effectively literacy and communication tools, and the school’s teaching and learning approaches empower ākonga to have agency to be successful and reach their potential.  

• Students have a strong sense of their culture and identity and work towards successfully achieving their individual goals. 

• A well-established school culture that enhances engagement and wellbeing for ākonga, through bicultural and multi-cultural approaches.  

• Ākonga success and potential are addressed through an adaptive and responsive curriculum that provides relevant learning opportunities to meet their individual and complex needs. 

• A collaborative school leadership team that is reflective and strongly focused on promoting the school’s strategic direction for improvement and creating school conditions for innovation. 

• Relational trust that is enhanced by distributed leadership opportunities across the school. 

Where to next? 

Moving forward, the school will prioritise continuing to:  

• investigate and develop ways to enable ākonga to be agentic learners 

• develop a shared understanding of literacy and communication across the school through targeted schoolwide professional development to ensure the sustainability of effective literacy and communication approaches.  

ERO’s role will be to support the school in its evaluation for improvement cycle to improve outcomes for all learners. ERO will support the school in reporting their progress to the community. The next public report on ERO’s website will be a Te Ara Huarau | School Evaluation Report and is due within three years.  

Shelley Booysen
Director of Schools 

​​9 April 2024​   

About the School 

The Education Counts website provides further information about the school’s student population, student engagement and student achievement. educationcounts.govt.nz/home  

Profile Report:

Te Ara Huarau is the evaluation approach that the Education Review Office (ERO) is using in our school. This is a developmental approach to evaluation where ERO and our school work together over time rather than one off review that happened previously. Te Ara Huarau is used in most English-medium state and state-integrated schools.

ERO maintains a regular review programme to evaluate and report on the education and care of young people in the schools. Our school worked alongside ERO to write our Profile Report. This type of report will only happen once as part of our initial engagement with Te Ara Huarau. The profile report reflects our strategic goals and a shared evaluation focus on one or more areas that are important to us as we work together to improve outcomes for all our learners. ERO, like us, has a strong focus on equity and excellence. Future reporting will show our progress and achievement towards meeting the goals we have set. Public reports like the Profile Report are published on ERO’s website.