Executive Summary

Introduction

This initiative was trialled in the latter part of 2003 in some Ministry of Education, Special Education (GSE) districts and rolled out nationally during 2004.

In 2004, Research New Zealand, was contracted by the Ministry of Education to evaluate the SLS initiative and identify opportunities to enhance it. The evaluation was based on a mixed method, a utilisation approach to understand SLS from multiple perspectives. The final report was presented in June 2006.

The key findings of the report state that the SLS initiative is achieving substantial success. It has been successfully operationalised to provide additional learning support nationally. Personnel and processes are in place and functioning well. The report found key assumptions underpinning the SLS initiative are largely correct and although several challenges have been identified, these are likely to be overcome primarily through refinements to existing processes.

What is SLS?

The Supplementary Learning Support Initiative (SLS) was developed in response to a ministerial review of the Special Education 2000 (SE 2000) framework, which found that students with high level special education needs were not eligible for Ongoing Reviewable Resourcing Scheme (ORRS). The overarching goal of SLS is to improve educational outcomes for these students and can be summarised as follows.

1. To supplement support for individual students where schools cannot assemble adequate support from existing special education initiatives.
2. To encourage greater educational collaboration to ensure support received by students is cohesive and integrated, and to enhance increasing capability amongst teachers to provide appropriate educational opportunities for students through allocation and monitoring of SLS.
3. To ensure that all students (particularly, Mäori and Pasifika students and students in low decile schools) have appropriate opportunities to learn and can access the full range of the curriculum to support a broad range of learning outcomes.

Support consists of an additional 0.1 full time equivalent (FTTE) teacher support (i.e. a learning support teacher) and, depending on needs identified in the Individual Education Plan (IEP), access to GSE specialist support. Schools are expected to continue funding students at the same level considered necessary prior to the introduction of supplementary support. Potential students are identified jointly by local GSE and RTLB staff and must be achieving at level one of the New Zealand Curriculum Framework in literacy and numeracy skills to be eligible.

The formal allocation of SLS began with the first ‘roll-out’ between January and June 2004 and was restricted to 550 students nationally. This provision was extended in 2005 and 2006 by additional allocation of 450 and 500 student spaces respectively, bringing the total number of students allocated SLS to 1500 nationally.