Annual report | GovHub Resource Centre

As part of your annual planning and reporting cycle, your board is required to develop an annual report – a document that reports on your school’s progress and use of school resourcing.

Keep reading to learn more.

What is the annual report?

The annual report shows your community and the Ministry of Education how your board has delivered on achieving the goals and objectives set out in your strategic and annual implementation plans.

It shows how well all your students have progressed over the last year, and how you have used your school's resources to improve outcomes for your students (including your financial and staffing resources).

Preparing the annual report provides a chance for your board to reflect and assess progress using the targets, expectations, and measures set out in the annual implementation plan and to celebrate progress with your school’s community.

Your board’s annual report is one of the most important documents you will make available to your community.

When must your annual report be published?

Under Section 134open_in_new of the Education and Training Act 2020, the Secretary for Education has determined that each school board must submit its annual report to the Ministry and make it available to the public by 31 May every year.

Remember that the annual report must be written and presented in a way that is easy for your school community to understand.

Why must your annual report be made available to the public?

As your community helped determine the board's strategic goals, they will have a vested interest in knowing how the board has used its resources to achieve these goals.

The annual report is your board’s primary document to show how you have applied your financial resources to achieve the goals set for that year.

School boards are Crown entities that receive government funding (i.e., public taxpayer funds) and, therefore, must comply with public sector regulations to demonstrate how those funds have been utilised.

The Education (School Planning and Reporting) Regulations 2023open_in_new aim to improve the transparency of schools and kura; publishing your report is one way you can achieve this.

Section 136open_in_new of the Education and Training Act requires your board to publish its annual report online on a website maintained by or on behalf of your board.

If your school doesn’t have a website, the Ministry can host your annual report on its Education Counts websiteopen_in_new.

At a minimum, your annual report should remain online until you publish your next one.

Although it’s good practice to keep the previous annual reports online.

What must your annual report contain?

Your annual report must include:

Your statement of variance (from what you planned to achieve in your strategic and annual implementation plans).
An evaluation of students’ progress and achievement, assessed against curriculum expectations (which should include students whose needs have not yet been well met).
Statement of compliance with employment policy.
Audited annual financial statements – including a signed statement of responsibility. (This acknowledges that the school board is responsible for the preparation and accuracy of the financial statements and states that the school board has established and maintained a system of internal control to safeguard the school’s or kura assets.)
Kiwisport funding – a statement on how your school has used its Kiwisport funding to increase students’ participation in organised sport.
Other reports on special and contestable funding (if applicable).

Your board can also choose to include:

A board report written by your presiding member or principal. This could be a statement informing your community about the achievements and successes of the previous year.
A list of all board members, which may also include the date they started and/or finished their term of office during that year.

The Ministry’s school annual reportsopen_in_new page provides a comprehensive list of what your annual report must include, further details, and an optional template.

Your principal will usually submit the annual report through the Ministry’s School Planning and Reporting Application on your board’s behalf.

What information should be redacted before publishing your annual report?

Before sharing the annual report publicly, your board must ensure that it doesn’t contain any information that could breach an individual’s privacy.

The following information may impact an individual’s privacy:

Names of individual students
Comments about individual students/families/teachers
Any data where school community members could reasonably identify the identity of individual students (for example, when you have a small number of students within a particular ethnic or gender category for a particular cohort of students).
Photos of students where permission has not been given by the student/parents
References to specific disabilities of students (depending on context).

Your board may wish to censor or group student data to remove these identifying factors.

Your board cannot censor or remove information about the principal’s remuneration and any settlement payments paid to staff or board members.

While the statement of responsibility document (included with the annual financial statements) must be signed by your principal and the presiding member, the documents you publish online do not need to contain these signatures.

A typed name for each signature is sufficient.

If you are scanning the document for publication, ensure that you cover these signatures.

This list is not exhaustive. If in doubt, please seek advice from us or the Privacy Commissioner.

Questions your board could ask

Do we understand our annual reporting requirements?
Do we check and redact any information that may breach an individual’s privacy?
Have we published our annual report(s) on our school website?
Are our reports easily understandable for community members?
What changes do we need to make?
How will we do this?

Templates, resources, and references

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