The principal’s report – your board’s key monitoring document
A principal’s report is a document that your principal prepares before every board meeting.
It provides your board with all the information you need to monitor your school’s performance and make informed decisions.
We often receive questions about what should be included in the principal’s report and whether there’s a standard template available.
Because your board, including your principal, should decide the structure of the principal’s report, we don’t provide a specific template.
Keep reading to learn more.
What information should the principal’s report contain?
Your principal should provide timely and accurate information to your board about overall school performance.
Not all the information listed below needs to be reported on at each meeting.
Using a board workplanopen_in_new to plan what reporting the board would like to see, and when this will be reported on, helps both the principal and the board.
Some of the things your principal’s reports could contain are:
Progress made – The progress made towards meeting the annual implementation plan goals and targets, and any variance from these, including:
- Actions the school is taking to support students in attending school regularly.
- Well-analysed, quality data on student achievement, especially for literacy and mathematics (or te reo matatini and pāngarau).
- How the teaching and learning strategies and programmes are addressing the needs of your target students and those students whose needs have not yet been well met.
- Financial reports associated with specific projects.
- Survey results or any other measures of success identified during board planning.
- Initiatives towards giving effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, if included in your annual planning.
- For specified kura boards, supporting a kaupapa that reflects Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
- Embedding of school values and special character.
Assurances – Assurances of school position, including any concerns or potential risks that the principal is aware of, including:
- School roll: current numbers, enrolments and departures, anticipated end-of-year roll and distribution of students across year groups compared to previous years (number of out-of-zone students, and/or the number/percentage of non-preference students (for state integrated schools) along with the number of students on a waiting list if the school has an Enrolment Scheme.
- Number of students on learning support register (this may be raised during reporting around targets).
- Staffing usage compared to entitlement with potential effect on budget, especially if your board funds some teaching position (banking staffing / SUE report information, leave taken, especially sick leave, and any professional learning and development (PLD) initiatives and leave taken, including how these relate to the annual implementation plan goals).
- Staffing vacancies and the impact they may have on operations and student learning.
- Finances highlighting working capital, variance from budgets and previous years, and any emerging issues.
- Property maintenance requirements (10YPP) and progress on any project work being undertaken, such as your 5YA capital works, highlighting any identified concerns with property not within the scope of your current maintenance plans (this may be reported to the proprietors of a state-integrated school because they are the owners of the property concerned).
Operational performance updates – Regular updates on the operational performance of the school in terms of compliance, such as (remember these reports are public, so do not include any information that could identify the individuals involved in your general board papers):
- Number of half days the school has been open.
- Attendance data (analysed to show any cohorts or trends over the term, including discussion and support required to improve attendance rates, if required).
- Health and safety incident register, especially analysed to show trends and patterns of ‘near misses’ and actual incidents (if any are noted). Including assurances that any identified hazards are being minimised or eliminated.
- Education Outside of the Classroom (EOTC) risk assessment and safety management information (as required in your school’s policy). Including reassurance that safety checking of any contracted providers or accompanying parents has been undertaken.
- Overseas travel requests or information required in your school’s policy. Including purpose, risk analysis, safety checking, budgets, etc.
- Evacuation, earthquake, and lockdown drill summaries.
- Number and brief outline of incidents involving surrender and retention of student property.
- Incidents requiring the use of physical restraint.
- Tracking of progress being made by any students on extended suspensions.
- Staffing requirements, such as compliance with equal opportunity (EEO) policy and assurance that all staff are on the correct collective agreement, registered, and vetted.
- For state-integrated schools, the number of teachers currently holding (special character or tagged) positions (Schedule 6 - Clause 47open_in_new of the Education and Training Act 2020).
Reporting on national curricula – Reporting on delivery of all aspects of the national curricula, especially on literacy and numeracy achievement, as well as other educational initiatives not already covered.
Policy review – The principal should advise the board of any identified areas where an operational policy may need to be reviewed by the board because of legislative or operational changes.
Ideally, the report is forward-looking but grounded in what has been, encouraging board members to focus on where to next.
Should the principal’s report identify areas of concern?
Yes. Some boards find it useful to have a dashboard or “traffic light” system for this reporting, so areas of concern can be identified quickly.
Quick identification of risks or alterations to targets allows your board and school management to modify their approach before issues become too large.
Modification may include a review of the target itself, especially in situations where it has become clear that the assumptions made while setting the target were unrealistic or based on inaccurate information.
Other modifications may require adjusting the allocation of resources, and suggestions on how this could be done should be included in the principal’s report.
What does well-analysed quality data mean?
Well-analysed means that the information has been collected in a consistent and repeatable manner and has been interpreted by the principal, so you understand what it means within your school context.
Analysis of curriculum areas, especially literacy and numeracy, as well as other school programmes, could include:
- Student achievement data that is categorised by year group, gender, ethnicity, consistency of schooling, and any other identified potential categories that might be used to determine if you are getting equitable outcomes across the school.
- Suggested barriers for students who are not engaging or progressing as expected to identify how staff can better meet the needs of these students.
- What is currently being done to support students to engage, progress and achieve excellent outcomes.
- Recommendations to your board to address the underlying causes of disparity, such as resourcing staff professional development, classroom programmes, embedding of school character, values, or changing community attitudes.
- Information on how the school is progressing towards making instruction available in te reo Māori, if this has been requested or is part of your school planning.
- Information on how your school policies and practices reflect New Zealand’s cultural diversity to meet the needs of your school’s students.
The reliability of the data is another factor to consider.
Using data from multiple sources will support the reliability of the information you are using to make decisions.
Consider:
- How was the data collected?
- Was it a single observation or a combination of a norm-referenced test and teacher judgement that has been moderated by other teachers?
- If comparing between years, was the same process used across the years?
Questions your board could ask
- Have we identified the information we need?
- In what format do we want to receive the information?
- How often do we require our principal to report on each piece of requested information?
- Is the information presented in a way that allows us to understand it?
- Are we able to scrutinise the information presented so we know what is going on for different groups of students and why?
- Are we getting regular data on the progress and achievement of our Māori students and the progress we are making towards having our policies and practices reflect New Zealand’s cultural diversity?
- Do our school’s staff need support from our board to improve in any area?
Templates, resources, and references
Click on the link(s) below to access the templates, resources, and references related to this topic.
These may download or open in a separate browser depending on your device.
Links from us
- Board workplanopen_in_new
- Board and principal employment relationship
- Monitoring and assessing principal performance
The Education and Training Act 2020
- Section 127 – Paramount objective of boards in governing schoolsopen_in_new
- Section 165 – Monitoring of and reporting on student performanceopen_in_new
- Section 134 – Statement of variance and annual reportsopen_in_new
- Section 136 – Annual report to be made availableopen_in_new
- Section 137C – Review of attendance management planopen_in_new