According to APA the socio-economic status of a family is
the "combination of education , income and occupation". The socio-economic status
of a community reflects the collective background of the families residing there.
The basic data that informs the socio-economic status of the
community at my high school is that it is a decile 3H school.
A cursory glance of
how the MOE website calculates decile ratings gives the following information:
Deciles are a measure of the
socio-economic position of a school’s student community relative to other
schools throughout the country.
Socio-economic indicators for decile
ratings
Deciles are
based on 5 socio-economic indicators for a community.
Percentage of
households with income in the lowest 20% nationally.
Percentage of
employed parents in the lowest skill level occupational groups.
Household
crowding.
Percentage of
parents with no educational qualifications.
Percentage of
parents receiving income support benefits
retrived from http://www.education.govt.nz/school/running-a-school/resourcing/operational-funding/school-decile-ratings/
The data available from the MOE website gives other indicators such as the numbers of students above and below the national standards plus the number of maori/pasifika/asian students and their academic success. Significantly there is also a high number of families that choose to access their education at other schools rather than their community one. What is also not reflected in the data is that the school has a large transient population with 35% of its year 11 population not starting at Year 9. Hattie indicates that school mobility has the biggest negative effect after depression on learning outcomes for pupils. (Hattie, 2009)
Significantly, the community is also characterised by a significant influx of students with English as a second language. These are mainly families from a Filipino background who have come into the community due to the Christchurch rebuild. These students and their families have made a distinct change to the feel of the school.
The professional environment in the school highlights individualised learning pathways. This has seen a significant shift in students exiting the school before the end of Year 13, accessing positive outcomes either through employment or further education such as trades training. This has not always been the case, on arrival at the school in 2007 student "success" was only viewed as individuals staying on to complete Year 13 with a University course place confirmed.
The issues that arise from the socio-economic status are that there is a large workforce requirement for local industry and services close to the school. These families often have low pay, take on more than one job, work long hours and have little time for family commitments. This is indicated by a poor turnout at parent evenings and school functions.
In terms of addressing the culture of the school we would be unique in the following sense.
The school is undergoing a whole school rebuild process earmarked for completion in 2018.
The school has a New Board of Trustees appointed in June and a new Principal in May of this year.
The school has recently gained Year 7 and 8 cohorts from a closure of an intermediate school thatsome of the parent community did not want to close and a large number of the community that did not want their children to attend.
The impact of the professional environment is that I along with others feel that:
We are collegial (working on this together), continuously improving, risk taking and supporting the move to the new school premises. This is the main focus at the present time.
However the rebuild process by its very nature has marginalised staff with no clear goals, management taking responsibility for success and no mutual respect or openness in the decision making behind the design.
The teaching culture at the school is therefore based on Balkanisation where teachers are neither isolated nor work as a whole school and smaller collaborative groups form across departments. Hargreaves (1994) .
Moving forward. The school is in a period of fluidity where staff and students are unclear, uncertain and may be forced to work (rather than collaborate) together as they move into buildings designed with modern learning practice in mind.
What is essential is that the culture of the school is developed with the local community to ensure that the school is the prefered choice of families both local and further afield.. In essence the school has to clearly meet and exceed the needs of the local community. It is vital that the elected Board of Trustees communicates a clear vision to the community with the values being co-constructed across all stakeholders. This would then determine the starting point to inform the school's structure, systems and physical environment, which in turn will impact on the way people relate and work together, ultimately determining how the culture of the school will be seen and perceived.
Ian R
Sept 2016
References
APA (2016) Education and socioeconomic status.retreived from http://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/education.aspx
Hattie J (2011) Visable Learning for Teachers, retrieved from,http://visible-learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effect-sizes-learning-achievement/
Hargreaves D. (1995). School culture, school effectiveness and and school improvements. School effectiveness and school improvements , 6 (1) pp 23-46.
MOE decile ratings retrevied from
http://www.education.govt.nz/school/running-a-school/resourcing/operational-funding/school-decile-ratings/
Stoll L.(1998) School Culture retrieved from
http://strongersmarter.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/stoll_article_set3_2000_pdf1.pdf
This was an interesting post to read, as just like you, my school is going under a whole school rebuild moving into a MLE school. The culture of our school is strong already, we are a community based school, however I felt that through this process the culture of our school has shifted again to take another angle. We are in pre-fabs, no hall, a landing strip for a field, constant shaking of the building while the earthworks and building are taking place. We have kept the community informed the whole way about what is going on. Communication lines have had to be strong as its not a short period of time that this effects. We have had to reassure parents about the process and the benefits at the end of the tunnel. As a staff, we have been lucky to have strong input into what we want for this new building and been given a lot of PD to support this shift. Good luck
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