Paperwork and Process

36 What are the roles of the board of trustees and the professional staff in charter development?

The development of the charter and annual report are the board's responsibility. However, successful schools are built on a partnership between trustees and professional staff.

The board has specific responsibility under NAG 2 to set the vision for the school, determine strategic direction, consult the community, and oversee planning for the school. The new legislation now requires that this be done with a specific focus on student achievement.

The specific role of the principal and professional staff is to develop the annual plan, set targets, and report on progress toward those targets. The annual plan works towards achieving the long-term learning outcomes for the students of the school.

The professional staff and trustees should support each other in this process. The principal and senior managers should be an active partner in setting the vision and determining strategic direction. The board should support the development of the annual plan and ask questions about the strategies for working towards the strategic goals, the targets set and the methods for monitoring progress. A charter will be approved by the board of trustees before it is copied to the Ministry and made available to the community.

37 Are models or templates available for charters and annual reports? What is recommended?

As no two schools are identical, one school's charter or report is not applicable for another. The Ministry does not expect two schools' charter plans to be the same, nor does it expect any school to sign up to a standard charter.

However, the Ministry has provided an outline of a charter that meets the legislative requirements. For details of what needs to be included in a charter see Q47 at the end of the FAQs. For a copy of the SmartCharter template provide your mail address to SP&R enquiry, or download from Thinking Template and SmartCharter.

The Ministry published advice in the Planning for Better Student Outcomes newsletters in 2003. See the June issue for information on the annual reporting process, and the September issue for case studies on analysis. Some examples of good planning and reporting practice are available in the November 2003 issue of P4BSO.

38 How much detail has to go in the charter? Does the charter have to include everything?

A school's charter serves the purpose of communicating its intended outcomes, values and goals, and its plans and priorities for teaching and learning programmes and associated activities, to its staff and community as well as to the government. As part of describing the alignment of its staffing, finance and physical resource plans with its strategic goals, these plans should be included in or referenced in the charter. Where the school has long-standing local policies or other plans that are important to those audiences, they could be copied into the charter, or may merely be referred to by it.

39 How do I send charters and reports to the Ministry?

The easiest way is to use the Schools Planning and Reporting DOCUMENT PORTAL, a website in the e-admin section of www.leadspace.govt.nz. The e-admin section also contains SchoolSMART, and some property information. SchoolSMART will assist you with your planning. It provides some indicators of school performance for your school compared to other schools (for example roll changes, staffing turnover, NCEA results).

To access the e-admin area, you need a Secure Internet Authorisation (or SIA). This is the same login you perform to access SchoolSMART and other e-admin applications. Contact planning.reporting@minedu.govt.nz for login assistance. After logging in to the Document Portal, you simply attach the file(s) you want to send - by logging in the school's details are automatically provided with the file(s) you send. The Ministry operates a Microsoft environment and prefers Microsoft files. If you are working in an Apple or other environment, please save your files as Microsoft Word, publisher or excel files or failing that, the generic rich text format (rtf).

There is on-line support in the Document Portal should you require assistance with this process. If you need to, contact planning.reporting@minedu.govt.nz for further advice.

40 Can I send you a link to the charter available on our school's website?

An increasing number of schools are choosing to publish their charter on-line, where it is readily available to the community at all times. However, to help build a picture of the school's progress over time the Ministry wishes to retain a copy of each year's charter. The Ministry prefers schools to provide a copy of their charter as an uploaded (or attached) document using the Document Portal in Leadspace. Through this, you can ensure that the copy provided is the latest version of your charter.

41 Who reads the charters and reports?

When a charter arrives at the Ministry it is read and considered by School Development Officers or other staff working with schools in the office nearest to the school. Some Ministry offices are offering secondments to school principals.

The charters are dealt with on a regional basis, rather than centrally, because local issues and context are better known "on the ground".

The Ministry would like to establish an on-going dialogue with schools about teaching and learning, improving self-review processes and classroom programmes on a system-wide and individual basis.

42 What are they looking for?

The Ministry of Education needs to scan across the school system to establish areas of greatest need, the extent to which national priorities are being addressed, and areas for further development. In this way, the Ministry can target its areas for further development in the areas of most need. This might involve policy development, provision of professional development opportunities, or new resources such as assessment tools.

There is no set structure or format for school charters, and no rules about how any school may articulate their objectives. To help the Ministry identify sector-wide trends from schools' charters, the analysts are required to identify the following information about a school's charter:

• the curriculum area, essential skill or attitude/value that each target refers to
• the target group of students, for example males, Mäori, students, and
• their year level.

If you have followed the SmartCharter framework that was distributed to all schools, you will have been prompted to provide this information.

43 Will the Ministry provide feedback?

After the charter has been read, the Ministry sends a letter of acknowledgement that reports how the charter corresponds to the legislative requirements.

When boards or school leadership indicate that they would like feedback, Ministry staff will provide comments to the school and possibly discuss the charter by phone or in person. Many schools request feedback, and to assist Ministry staff to provide consistent, useful advice, a structured approach has been developed for Ministry staff to refer to when reading a charter. When it is requested, feedback is provided to schools with a formal letter of acknowledgement. Feedback is provided either as narrative commentary in the letter, or in an attached comments sheet.

If the school leadership and board tell the Ministry that they do not wish to receive feedback, only the letter of acknowledgement will be sent.

For more in-depth support, there are a range of support options including BoT Training contracts and the Leadership and Management Advisors from School Support Services. Contact your local Ministry office for assistance.

44 Where is the Charter stored and who has access to it?

Charters are stored in an electronic document management system. Each school has its own folder inside the system containing a collection of their charters and annual reports.

The documents are stored complete and "as is" - that is, the integrity of the school's work is maintained - charters and reports will be viewed exactly as they were intended to be presented.

When a document is submitted to the Ministry, staff in each region is notified of the document's arrival and allocates the review of the charter to a staff member in the Ministry office local to the school.

45 How will the charters be analysed across the board to see if achievement levels are improving nationally?

Ministry staff are expected to become familiar with the issues and trends in the schools they work with. The analysis of targets will allow the government to determine trends in schools' priority setting and the sector's responsiveness to education policies and national priorities. In conjunction with information from surveys such as NEMP the government will be able to get a picture of where improvements are occurring and what factors are involved.

The school and the Ministry will be interested in the school's performance against its targets for the purposes of setting the targets for next year. However, an analysis comparing the performance against targets between schools is not valid due to the individual benchmarks, measures, resources, and priorities each school sets. The Ministry will not be performing national data analysis comparing individual schools.