Māwhera Kahui Ako
Greymouth, New Zealand
About Us
Māwhera Kāhui Ako (community of learning) is a cluster of 13 schools from the Grey District, West Coast, New Zealand. The Māwhera Kāhui Ako is built on a strong foundation of trust, as members have previously worked together in a school improvement initiative, then a Learning Change Network cluster.
Eleven of our 13 schools are also part of the Manaiakalani Outreach Programme (Toki Pounamu), so the Kāhui Ako has provided a vehicle to accelerate progress. The Woolf Fisher Research Centre is collecting and analysing our data, which includes teacher observations, parent/child surveys, robust moderation practices and feed-forward.
Our first priority was to strengthen and align Teacher Inquiry in all 13 schools, modelled on the Spirals of Inquiry, so all 150 teachers could inquire into their practice and reflect on their teaching. Secondly, consistency of Overall Teacher Judgements (OTJs) was explored, leading to our decision to use the PaCT tool.
Raising achievement in writing is a focus for our Kāhui Ako and moderation of writing has been held twice yearly for all kaiako across both sectors. From 2016 to 2018, the schools involved in the Manaiakalani Outreach Programme have made accelerated progress in writing.
We successfully applied for PLD hours and have worked with our facilitators to design a programme to cater for the needs of our low literacy learners, particularly our boys. The facilitators will work alongside classroom practitioners to co-plan and co-teach priority learners.
Education Counts - Māwhera Kāhui Ako information
MOE Achievement Challenges - Māwhera Kahui Ako
Grey Valley Schools:
Greymouth Central Schools:
Greymouth South:
Greymouth North Schools:
This diagram is designed to help make sense of overlapping clusters - view diagram document here.