Flawed schools have improved, says commissioner

The commissioner in charge of two Auckland schools for children with behavioural problems says teaching at both has improved since a damning report was written.

An Education Review Office report, completed last September but only released on Wednesday night, found "inadequate reporting, ineffective leadership and poor quality practice" at Waimokoia School in Half Moon Bay and Westbridge School in Massey.

Education Minister Anne Tolley has asked for submissions by the end of next week on whether she should close Waimokoia, but has taken no stance yet on the report's recommendation that both the Auckland schools and McKenzie School in Christchurch should be closed "in the long term".

Dennis Finn, who has been commissioner at Westbridge since 2000 and at Waimokoia since last year, said the report was already out of date.

"This report was written in 2008 and it was absolutely correct that the school [Waimokoia] was facing some staffing issues at that time," he said.

Four former staff members were then facing charges for offences against children at the school, although two have since been acquitted. The other two both face retrials next year after hung juries in the past two months.

But Mr Finn said changes had been made at both schools since then, and an updated ERO report on Westbridge in May found that "much better teaching is now evident".

"There were some issues there [at Westbridge], that's for sure. I don't deny that. There has been work undertaken to address them. I'm comfortable about where that is as the commissioner of the school.

"There have been staffing changes, resulting in some change of teaching practices, alongside some professional development."

The school's chief for the past five years, John Rutherford, remains in place, but the new ERO report says a new deputy principal "has had a significant impact on the culture of teaching and learning in the school".

"His insistence on teachers understanding student achievement data and on using the data to inform their practice has been the biggest single change in educational practice in the school," it said.

However, it said there were still "issues about the quality of teaching" and the agency planned to return to the school within a year to check on progress.