Evaluating the LSC role

This new data builds on the considerable evidence base developed during Phases 1 and 2. For Phase 3, additional whānau, service manager, and identified national Ministry staff (stakeholder) interviews were completed, alongside surveys of LSC, kura/schools, and kaiako/teachers. Importantly, this phase includes learning and insights from Māori medium settings from a kaupapa Māori perspective.

Evidence from all three phases is drawn on to answer the evaluation questions and provide key findings, insights and considerations for improvement.

High value investment

Most kura/schools (72%, n=321) and kaiako/teachers (59%, n=122) with an LSC, and LSC themselves (67%, n=141) were highly satisfied with the LSC role. Additionally, seven in ten kura/schools, seven in ten LSC, and six in ten kaiako/teachers, rated the Ministry’s investment in the LSC role as good or very good value.

Working well in the kura/school environment

The LSC role is established, working as intended and generating the initial outcomes expected for kura/schools. Kura/schools’ ability to identify and respond to learning support needs has improved on many fronts, including the establishment and use of learning support registers, accessing of resources, supporting kaiako/teachers, and LSC providing an effective link between the kura/school, whānau, and other agencies.

Success is supported by the credibility and soft skills of LSC (such as relatability and communication style) and the active support of, and involvement with, kura/school leadership. The main barriers that hinder progress in kura/schools are a lack of shared understanding of the LSC role purpose and scope and the lack of leadership support or involvement.

Large urban kura/schools with a full time LSC on site reported the greatest benefit and satisfaction with the LSC role. Other kura/schools are sharing an LSC. There is no ‘best way’ to share an LSC, but there are different operational models, each with benefits and trade-offs.

Feedback from Māori medium stated that the design of the LSC role does not reflect te ao Māori

For Māori medium, the design of the LSC role has not reflected te ao Māori and the pedagogy of kura kaupapa. Not being able to recruit the person with the right fit for the role, and poor experiences of sharing the role with English medium schools, indicate a need to reconsider operational settings for Māori medium contexts. Engaging with Māori peak bodies to explore partnership options will support this process.

Transitions are enhanced by LSC, but other collaborative activity is harder to get traction on

Supporting transitions between kura/schools by developing pathways and processes, and working with individual learners and whānau, has been the simplest space for LSC to consistently get involved and add value in the collaborative cluster space.

The infrastructure needed for LSC to influence learning support at a cluster level is context dependent and is often lacking. This makes it hard for LSC to get traction on learning support activities, beyond their individual kura/schools. Infrastructure refers to the role Ministry service managers play, existing relationships between kura/schools, and incentives and processes for working as a collective. This lack of collective infrastructure is further compounded by some kura/schools’ perception of the LSC role as an individual kura/school resource, rather than the cluster resource it was designed to be.

Considerations for now and the future

Opportunities to sustain and improve the value of the current tranche can be summarised as two areas of activity: firstly, building in role infrastructure for LSC such as leadership, professional development and a career pathway. This infrastructure will complement the second area of activity, which is to strengthen the conditions for collaborative working. The value added to individual kura/schools is considered sufficient itself. If more is expected of the role in a collective sense then positive incentives, interventions and other tools may be required; this will prime the environment so LSC contributions to the intent of the Learning Support Delivery Model (LSDM) are engineered through design.

Kura/schools and clusters may need more time and support with readiness for LSC to ensure optimal implementation. This includes messages that reinforce the concept of LSC being a cluster resource rather than school ‘entitlement’. Increasing the emphasis on clusters could also reinforce the inclusion of support with transitions from Early Learning Services (ELS), an opportunity for early intervention that is not always recognised by clusters.

Kura/schools value the contribution of LSC, however, many are mindful that they have a resource that other kura/schools with similar or more needs do not. Currently four in ten kura/schools have an LSC allocation; the stakeholders we engaged with said this was unfair. There are early signs of other learning support resources compensating for this, which was not foreseen.

For example, service managers and Resource Teachers Learning and Behaviour (RTLB) have described focusing more on kura/schools without an LSC to provide, in their view, more equitable support of learning support needs across all kura/schools. Any further resourcing of LSC will provide an opportunity for the Ministry to review the allocation method. This could include ways to adjust for the trade-off of sharing an LSC with other kura/schools as well as exploring the role of the Equity Index (as a proxy indicator of learning support need) in allocation decisions.

1.1 Structure of this report

This report starts with an overview of the unique LSC role, then a brief summary of the evaluation design (Section 3). Key findings from all three phases of evaluation are shared early in the report (Section 4) before new evidence is presented in Sections 5 and 6. Section 5 covers our learning from Māori medium and Section 6 uses evidence from current implementation to answer the evaluation question, how well is the role functioning? Section 7 answers the evaluation question, what value has the initial tranche created for learning support? Our insights and learning are presented in Section 8 before the last section of this report outlines opportunities for improving LSC implementation across kura/schools and clusters.

We use the terms kura/schools, tumuaki/principals and kaiako/teachers throughout this report. A glossary of Māori terms and acronyms used in this report can be found in Appendix 1 and 2 respectively in the PDF version of this report.