Support

46 What support is available?

Over the last few years the government has made available a considerable amount of professional development for both pedagogy and assessment in areas such as literacy and numeracy; technology education; the Arts Nga Toi; ICT; assessment for better learning; standards-based assessment and so on. Many of those programmes aimed at supporting the growth of quality teaching and assessment continue to be available to support boards and principals in implementing their plans.

Additionally, considerable investment has been made in the development of assessment tools (such as asTTle) and exemplars to enable good tracking of progress and information for programme improvement.

The Ministry of Education has appointed some new staff including short-term principal secondments, to support management teams and boards in their planning and reporting as well as aspects of programme implementation.

The schools' management advisers (attached to the Colleges of Education) have worked very closely with the Ministry in developing this policy and are well equipped to assist schools in their self-review and development of plans.

Both the Ministry (through local contracts) and NZSTA offer training and support to Boards of Trustees.

There are a number of contestable funding pools available to provide additional resource where a school needs that to implement its improvement plans.

For assistance with your charter, contact your local Ministry office.

47 Charter Contents

The following outline comes from the Smart Charter template. Whether you use the Smart Charter template or not, it clarifies what each section of a charter must include as specified by the legislation.