Summary

The Schooling Improvement team of the Ministry of Education sought to examine the current state of Pasifika academic achievement in Schooling Improvement initiatives and in individual schools. Part of the examination was to identify aspects of Schooling Improvement (SI) work that has been shown to enhance or hinder academic achievement for Pasifika students and to offer some recommendations. This report is a summary of a detailed technical report from Auckland UniServices Limited prepared by the Woolf Fisher Research Centre. Details of each of the sections summarised here are contained in ‘Ua aoina le manogi o le lolo: Pasifika Schooling Improvement Full Technical Report’ (Amituanai-Toloa, McNaughton, Lai, & Arini, 2009).

Purpose

The purpose was three-fold: First, to identify practices that work to raise achievement and close the gaps for Pasifika students especially at the classroom, school and cluster levels. Second, to find out how effective Schooling Improvement initiatives are in raising achievement for Pasifika students. Third, to provide information to help existing and new initiatives to improve their effectiveness for Pasifika students.

The research questions that emerged from the three-fold purpose of this project fell into two overarching research questions:

1. What works in schools for Pasifika students and under what conditions?
2. What are the barriers to schools achieving positive learning outcomes for Pasifika students?

Findings would contribute to the SI team’s understanding of how they could best influence what initiatives do, and in turn what schools do, to ensure the best possible outcomes, in achievement terms, for Pasifika students. The research would look at some of the key characteristics of the school environment associated with positive outcomes for students and how initiatives that are successful for Pasifika students operate in practice. A further concern was to clarify what constitutes ‘evidence of success’ and to see how participating schools and the different clusters may be able to articulate a clear link between elements of the initiative and student outcomes and how such links might be validly investigated.