Education

Huanui College

Measuring the health of a school community

The Thriving Schools Index is a way to holistically measure the health of a school community by gathering data from key stakeholders including parents, staff and students and comparing the results against national data. Huanui College leveraged McCrindle’s Thriving Schools Index to gain insights from its school community ahead of its next strategic planning cycle.

Established in 2010, Huanui College is an independent, co-educational school located in New Zealand’s Whangārei area. The College is a member of Independent Schools New Zealand and enrols approximately 350 students from Year 7 to Year 13. McCrindle’s Thriving Schools Index provides schools evidence-based school experience insights to inform operational and strategic decisions.

The solution

Huanui College ran a survey of parents, staff and students using McCrindle’s Thriving Schools Index. The Thriving Schools Index includes 24 questions across 6 domains:

Student development
Teaching
Student wellbeing
Schooling experience
Connection and belonging
Leadership

"The Thriving Schools Index provided a context for us to test how well we were ‘walking our talk’ of our school shared vision – for parents, students, and teachers. As well as providing an overview that gave us a ‘feel’ for how we were travelling, the TSI provided a level of granularity and analysis that had previously been unavailable to us. The Index allowed us to triangulate our data and gain a reality check on how effectively we were delivering. The presentation of the summary and full report was outstanding, as was the level of support provided throughout the process. We now have a real benchmark on which we can assess how well strategic initiatives assist in achieving our vision. We will be conducting this work annually, to gain longitudinal data on how well we are building on our successes, and how well we are addressing our opportunities for growth. First-class!"

－ Philip Coombe, Principal

The key findings were presented in an executive summary report containing visualised outputs including:

An explanation of the Thriving Schools Index and its components
Full-page breakdown of the scores for each key indicator, for each stakeholder group (parents, teachers, students)
Summary tables: top 5 indicators, bottom 5 indicators, top 5 variances from national average, top 5 variances between stakeholder groups

The findings were also presented to the school’s leadership team to support them as they seek to incorporate the results into future planning, and to share key findings back to the school community.