West Coast New Zealand

The West Coast Way – we’re at the leading edge in raising achievement levels in literacy and we want to carry on

By the end of 2007 the West Coast Literacy project had established a strong collaborative network.   The overall academic progress made by students and the pedagogical changes by teachers had been identified as critical to maintain. The Principals and literacy lead teachers had taken major leadership roles in developing “The West Coast Way”, a model to sustain the gains made in literacy achievement and in the pedagogy of literacy teaching over the time of The West Coast Literacy Project 2005 – 2007.

Secondary Literacy Project

The impact of The Woolf Fisher Research Centre (WFRC) research and development programme for West Coast Primary schools and early childhood centres is well documented and has become the benchmark to demonstrate what can happen when the focus for student achievement becomes data and research driven.

This project aligns with Development West Coast’s objective to raise regional literacy levels. The project will focus on the review of the apparent disparity between relatively high reading comprehension and writing scores in Year 8 and the relatively low literacy achievement in NCEA at Year 11.  A second focus is to replicate the process of changing schools to be more effective.  The project will be three years in duration involving profiling, analysis as well as content related professional development. 

A mechanism for funding exists through the University of Auckland’s Starpath project - this receives dollar/dollar funding from the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) using non vote education monies that the university has gained for significant educational projects aimed at increasing achievement levels and studying transitions into tertiary education. 

The University will use matched funds provided by TEC using the current funding form DWC West Coast Literacy Project to attract the matched funding of c$500,000 to use to fund a sub contract with Starpath to fund the new literacy project. (Wolf Fisher Research Centre will be the providers of the Secondary Literacy Project).