Four new features released in Progress and Consistency Tool

Four new progress features in the Progress and Consistency Tool are helping teachers share information and have conversations with parents and whānau about their children’s progress. The reports can be used as a basis for designing teaching and learning programmes.

“We love the new progress reports. It’s a great way to look at the data. I’ve already used them to discuss 2019 class placements with parents and they were really helpful,” says Lynmore School Principal Lorraine Taylor.

“From the Progress Trend reports, we can see one of our students who has struggled since starting school, but he’s staying with the pack and not drifting further. In fact, he’s aligned to catch up by Year 9/10 if he continues as he is.

“Another who has poor attendance and that shows in her progress. That’s a conversation we can then have with the student and her parents about what we can do to make school a place they want to attend more often. It’s not about blaming anyone, it’s about looking at the data and making changes in our approach to give students the best opportunities for success,” says Lorraine.

The new features now put teachers in a stronger position to support ākonga to continue to make progress.

Kairanga School Principal Alastair Schaw says that they’re already seeing the benefits of the new progress releases.

“The old reports we’d analyse and present them in a new way for a different audience. These new reports are better for teachers, better for boards of trustees and better for parents.”

Key advantages

Alastair says the new Progress and Consistency Tool features have three key advantages. 

“The first advantage is clarity around progress for boards of trustees. The second is assurance to parents about the progress of their child. The descriptors are clear on where the child’s at now – what’s the next significant step and where they’ve been.”

“Thirdly, for our analysis as teachers – if we want to accelerate learning, we can pull that information out in a really clear way that gives us confidence in the information to where we want to take the kids.”

Lorraine says that the main strength for them in using the Progress and Consistency Tool is that it’s cross-curricula.

“Since we’ve been using the Progress and Consistency Tool it’s really impacted a lot of the structures in our school. It’s de-siloed a lot of what we do. We don’t do ‘reading’, ‘writing’, ‘science’ – we don’t have them in separate books anymore, we don’t record that data in separate places.”

“This is all about a child’s learning journey through The New Zealand Curriculum,” says Lorraine. 

To find out more about what our teachers and tumuaki are saying about the Progress and Consistency Tool and the benefits of the new features, head to the Ministry’s Facebook page. 

What are the new progress features?

Expected curriculum progress

This feature shows the progress expected through levels 1 to 5 of the curriculum and is based on the expectation that students will take two years of schooling to move through each level of the NZC. It provides a visual trajectory for expected achievement and appropriate rates of progress in relation to the demands of the curriculum.

Typical progress

This feature shows the achievement of the middle 50 per cent of students and is based on data collected within Progress and Consistency Tool. It shows student achievement in relation to the wider population. 

Progress trend

This feature shows what the student’s expected rate of progress will be over the next 12 months, if learning conditions are unchanged. It is based on the student’s achievement over the previous 14 months. 

Progress narratives

This feature provides concise general descriptions which summarise what students can usually do when they achieve at different stages of the NZC level (this is shown on the Progress and Consistency Tool scale).

How do I use the new progress features?

Under the Progress Reports tab in the Progress and Consistency Tool, you can create progress reports for individual students. Progress reports can be tailored and used for teaching and learning including conversations with students, parents and whānau. 

To see the new progress report graphs for yourself, head to the demo tool(external link) (without needing a login).
Then click on ‘reports’ tab and then ‘student’. 

Sign up and find out more about the Progress and Consistency Tool PaCT.(external link)

Get professional support from the Consortium of Professional Learning.(external link)