Part of establishing a CoL has been the task of setting an “Achievement Challenge” that all schools in your CoL will aim for and target.
In the initial stages, schools were gun ho, with vast varieties of creative innovations for what these challenges could be and what would lead to set one community aside from another. Many delved into what was important to them and their community when deciding on their achievement challenges.
In a quiet hush of excitement and trepardation rolled into one as the response envelope was opened. A quick skim to see if the achievement challenges had been accepted.
No. Instead what many CoLs got was a rejection letter of their achievement challenges, with some suggestions and examples of what might be a better challenge.
The result of this is quite evident where two years of returned achievement challenges until the CoLs came up with one that would fit into the box that the Ministry aresqueezing is all into.
Of the 61 CoL’s that have currently (March 2017) had their achievement challenges accepted, I worked out the following stats:
83% have something about Maths.
88% have something about Writing. Of those, 60% are about National Standards.
70% of CoLs want improvement at Achieving Level 2 NCEA.
36% are focussed on Maori achievement in some way, and 29% on boys achievement.
10% focus on additional learning needs.
Next to none have anything holistic, such as Hauora (wellbeing) or creativity, mindfulness or community focuses, or other curriculum areas such as Science or the Arts.
Make what you will of that.