PLA DRAFT 6 OCTOBER 2004 – first draft

IMPROVING PERFORMANCE THROUGH SCHOOL SELF-EVALUATION AND DEVELOPMENT PLANNING: AN INTRODUCTION - OfSTED October 2004

CONTENTS

PART 1: GENERAL

Introduction

What is the basis of effective self-evaluation?

Why is self-evaluation integral to school development and improvement?

What is the basis of effective school development planning?

The continuous cycle of self-evaluation, planning, review and monitoring for development and improvement (diagram)

PART 2: WHAT IS THE BASIS OF EFFECTIVE SELF-EVALUATION?

PART 3: WHAT IS OFSTED’S SCHOOL SELF-EVALUATION FORM (SEF)?

PART 4: GUIDANCE ON COMPLETING THE EVALUATION SECTIONS OF THE SEF

IMPROVING PERFORMANCE THROUGH SCHOOL SELF-EVALUATION AND DEVELOPMENT PLANNING

PART ONE: GENERAL

Introduction

  1. Successful school improvement is based on a clear understanding of a school’s performance and educational direction, and effective action (both within the school and with partners) to tackle the key priorities. This is self-evaluation and planning.
  2. Evidence from Ofsted inspections suggests a correlation between high quality provision and strong leadership and effective self-evaluation and strategic planning. It also suggests that a large majority of schools are able to assess aspects of their work effectively, but that there is scope for significant improvement in around a tenth of schools and room for improvement in around a third. This guidance is intended to help headteachers and other school leaders consider how they can get the best out of their self-evaluation and planning processes.
  3. There are many ways for a school to evaluate its performance. Schools can choose for themselves what process of self-evaluation they wish to go through. But this guidance suggests that whatever self-evaluation process a school chooses it should meet some key tests of effectiveness. As self-evaluation is the starting point for the school’s plan, for its dealings with the School Improvement Partner (SIP), and for inspection, it is important to have a clear evidence base and a record of the conclusions of self-evaluation and to keep these up-to-date as part of its continual self-evaluation cycle.
  4. Schools will recognise the importance of using a reliable data set that will underpin the accountability and inspection aspects of this process. They will also recognise the importance of recording conclusions from self-evaluation in order to be ready for any inspection. They will want to avoid being rated low for leadership and management, which is likely to happen if they cannot demonstrate to themselves, to SIPs and to inspectors that the school is evaluating its performance in an effective way. We recommend strongly that schools complete the OFSTED Self Evaluation Form (SEF) to serve as an effective record and to update this at least once a year. We also recommend that the SEF is agreed by the Governing Body.

What is the basis of effective self-evaluation?

  1. Whatever approach schools adopt, there are some acid tests of its effectiveness:
  • Is our school’s self-evaluation based on a good range of telling evidence?
  • Does the self-evaluation identify the most important questions about how well our school serves its learners?
  • How does our school compare with the best comparable schools?
  • Does our self-evaluation and planning involve key people in the school and seek the views of key groups, eg parents, learners, other agencies?
  • Is the self-evaluation process integral to our key management systems?
  • Does our self-evaluation lead to action to achieve the school’s longer term goals for development?

Further information about these principles of self-evaluation is in Part 2.

Why is self-evaluation integral to school development and improvement?

  1. School self-evaluation is an on-going developmental process which effective schools employ in order to identify their strengths and weaknesses and, consequently, their key priorities for improvement. It leads to action and evaluation and monitoring of that action. It needs to be undertaken openly and honestly and be embedded in the culture of the school. School self-evaluation, leading to a single School Development Plan, is an essential component of intelligent accountability; it ensures that school leaders are at the heart of the quality assurance process. Headteachers will want to ensure for their own accountability purposes that a professional and objective evaluation of a school’s performance, priorities for improvement, and targets is undertaken regularly.

The SEF will be the starting point of the dialogue in short notice inspections to check whether the school knows itself well – and to confirm the basis on which the school has made its judgements. Inspectors will check that the judgements made in the SEF fit with their view of the school. To avoid inspectors drawing conclusions about a lack of quality in leadership and management, headteachers and governors will want to ensure that their self-evaluation processes do not lead them to partial or inadequate judgements. However, in addition to evaluation against the Ofsted framework a school may wish to evaluate its performance against other criteria as well. These judgements may be incorporated into the SEF or else recorded alongside. Some illustrated guidance from Ofsted on how to complete the SEF is attached in Part 4. Further guidance is available….

The SEF and the evidence underpinning it will also inform the conversation between the headteacher and the SIP, as part of the school’s own accountability process.

What is the basis of effective school development planning?

  1. Well-led schools have a whole-school agreement on vision and values, drawn up with the involvement of the whole school community. Clear planning, built on self-evaluation, puts schools in a strong position to shape their own future. The school’s vision will be expressed usually in a single, strategic 3 to 5 year rolling development plan, of which the annual development plan is a component. Schools should aim for a single, integrated plan which:
  • has both short term (the year ahead) and medium term (3 - 5 years ahead) goals
  • concentrates in the short term on a small number of priorities for improvement that will impact on learner achievement and wellbeing. (A common problem with school plans is that they may attempt too much, and distract energy from the most important issues.)
  • encompasses all school initiatives and meets the needs of all partners for planning documentation
  • covers partnership work with other schools and work with the wider community, as well as school-centred work
  • is clear about concrete outcomes and success measures (usually outcomes that can be expressed in terms of learner achievement), and provides a basis for monitoring how the plan is progressing
  • is clear about who is responsible for action, and about deadlines for action
  • is clearly linked to resources and costing
  • is subject to systematic monitoring, review and evaluation

The activities in the single plan, their regular review, evaluation and monitoring form part of a school’s own accountability process. The plan can benefit from objective scrutiny during the dialogue between the headteacher and the SIP.

The continuous cycle of self-evaluation, planning, review and monitoring for development and improvement

The diagram below illustrates how the self-evaluation, planning and monitoring processes can fit together in a continuous cycle. It is not meant to be prescriptive, and does not depict any timescale; schools will have their own preferences about how this process should be carried out.

PART 2

WHAT IS THE BASIS OF EFFECTIVE SELF-EVALUATION?

Schools considering how to set up or revise their process for self-evaluation will want to answer the following questions:

[i] Is our school’s self-evaluation based on a good range of telling evidence?

How a school identifies the evidence used in making its own judgements on its effectiveness and priorities is not prescribed. Schools are free to use any model which gives them the best insights into their improvement priorities.

However, schools should recognise the importance of using a set of data that is the result of:

  • monitoring and interpreting the current academic achievement and personal development of learners, take-up and other data, trends over time, and other performance indicators for key stages, subjects and groups of learners. Both raw attainment data and contextualised value-added data should be used.
  • tracking individual learners and sampling their work
  • observation and evaluation of lessons
  • the evaluation of teachers’ planning

…and is also likely to include other key sources of information, such as

  • parents’, learners’ and other stakeholders’ views, which may be collected through sampling or surveys
  • evidence about learners’ attitudes, behaviour, attendance and response to pastoral support
  • evidence about the use of financial resources available to the school
  • monitoring undertaken by governors
  • performance management information
  • reports from agencies involved in the work of the school and / or with individual learners.

The PAT/PANDA and other information systems available to schools will contain the core data that will underpin the inspection process.

Schools will adopt different approaches to school self-evaluation, planning the evidence gathering in the light of their priorities and contexts. The best schools will have simple processes which allow evidence to be collected by middle and senior managers in ways which naturally arise out of the work of the school and avoid unnecessary paperwork. Therefore, they will be able to respond to the demands required by an inspection at very short notice, without disrupting the school’s routine. In many schools, the equivalent of the overall school SEF is already available and it is also available at departmental and coordinator levels.

[ii] Does our self-evaluation identify the most important questions about how well our school serves its learners?

Models of school self-evaluation which merely assess whether procedures and processes are in place will lack the required robustness. Self-evaluation processes need to check:

  • whether policies are in place
  • whether they work (ie by improving standards for learners)
  • know why they work or do not work (ie the evidence base) and
  • lead to plans for action to develop and improve the school.

As a starting point to the evaluative process schools can consider the questions set out in the SEF. Schools could use this to explore in more detail the reasons for learners’ performance so that secure judgements can be reached. However, a school may also wish to evaluate its performance against other criteria not included in the Ofsted inspection framework. This is to be welcomed, and schools are encouraged to assess their success on as wide a range of evidence as they feel appropriate. Clearly schools will want to review priorities such as academic standards, learners’ personal development and the quality of teaching and learning at least annually, but they might wish to review other aspects over a longer timescale.

[iii] How does our school compare with the best comparable schools?

Effective self-evaluation benchmarks the school’s and learners’ performance against what is achieved in the best comparable schools, by looking at current achievement and trends over time.This means looking wider than comparisons with local schools. Schools can use data about learner’s attainment and value-added available nationally and from the LEA to enable them to compare the performance of similar learners with the best in similar schools locally and nationally. A key measure in judging a school’s performance will be that of value-added benchmarks and, for learners with significant special educational needs, the progress they make commensurate to their ability.

This data analysis can inform the improvement planning process whilst focusing teachers on strategies aimed at raising the achievement of all learners in every key stage and in all subjects to match the best achieved by other subject areas within the school and schools nationally. This might mean looking at the achievement of different groups of learners within the school, for example, by gender, ability, prior attainment, subject, key stage, EAL, special educational needs, gifted and talented, etc.

[iv] Does our self-evaluation and planning involve key people in the school and seek the views of key groups, eg parents, learners, other agencies?

School self-evaluation is only effective if it is based on openness, honesty and trust – balancing the desire to highlight the issues facing the school with the need to challenge staff and governors to seek the highest standards possible.

The school’s leadership team is best placed to make judgements about the school’s strengths, weaknesses and priorities. However, others can have an important role and their views should help form the judgements.

Governors / Contribute to assessing practice. Have overall responsibility for the school’s future and should be involved in agreeing or endorsing priorities and strategies emerging from the on-going self-evaluation and monitoring process.
Subject coordinators and department leaders / Lead the evaluation of their areas of work
Parents / Give their view of how well the school serves their learner’s needs through focus groups, sampling, surveys, etc
Learners / Give their view of how well their needs are met through School Council, periodic sampling, surveys, etc
Teachers / Contribute insights into learners’ progress and personal development, and key issues for improvement, including the contribution of CPD to raising standards of teaching and learning.
Community groups and agencies that work with the school and learners / Provide evidence of how well the school serves learners’ and staff needs and/or evidence of how it raises teaching and learning standards for other learners and staff, such as those in partner schools, institutions or the wider community.
Other headteachers and leadership teams / Offer an external perspective on your school
School Improvement Partner / Offers the perspective of a “critical friend” on the self-evaluation undertaken, focusing on the outcomes the school wants to achieve

The leadership team is best placed to determine how to secure views from their stakeholders and determine what will add rigour to their self-evaluation in the light of their school’s circumstances.

[v] Is the self-evaluation process integral to our key management systems?

As a school develops its systems, it should aim to integrate self-evaluation with the other systems that ensure high quality, especially:

  • performance management of staff
  • CPD (e.g. how this contributes to improvements in teaching and learning and how well subject areas and departments interact to share good practice and learn from one another).
  • assessment and target setting for learners
  • planning.

[vi] Does our self-evaluation lead to action to achieve the school’s longer term goals for development?

Self-evaluation is only effective if it leads to action. An effective single, integrated School Development Plan needs to include actions that deliver outcomes for improving and developing the school, as measured by learner outcomes in teaching and learning. Being based on an effective self-evaluation process, these actions in turn are reviewed, monitored, evaluated and, where necessary, revised in the light of experience.

An effective Single Development Plan should:

  • communicate a clear, unique vision, with both short and long term objectives and improvement priorities, reflecting the needs and views all of stakeholders and focusing on no more than 3 to 5 goals per year
  • be practical and achievable, offering high impact strategies for improvement and development, including short and longer term activities, depending on circumstances
  • be a clearly written working document that will be used as part of the on-going in-year evaluation process to guide and inform in-year decisions, evaluate and monitor shorter term targets and be revised as necessary as part of the self-evaluation process. As such it will have clearly defined objectives, timescales, milestones, details of who is accountable for what actions, and how the activities will be monitored and evaluated
  • offer challenging targets that drive the school forward by being focused on learner achievement, with success criteria for activities related to learner outcomes for teaching and learning
  • enable effective financial planning, with improvement and development priorities costed within budget and in line with budget priorities
  • provide a framework for performance management that supports priorities for improving teaching and learning for learners
  • encompass all school initiatives and provide clear information which will meet the needs of bodies who previously required separate documentation for bidding, monitoring or evaluation purposes.
  • have a strong community dimension, reflecting partnerships beyond the classroom and show how the school will link with its partners, such as local schools, consultants and others in the wider community to improve outcomes in teaching and learning for learners at the school and/or in the community.
  • involve and be approved by the Governing Body

PART 3