Rozenberg S.O. Is a Secondary School Counting 1400 Pupils Ranging Between the Age of 12 to 18

Self-evaluation

Rozenberg S.O. is a secondary school counting 1400 pupils ranging between the age of 12 to 18.

The staff consists of 4 directors and 165 teachers and 15 secretaries.

In October 2001 we spent our pedagogical seminar on self-evaluation.

Why did we choose that theme?

Schools have to develop more professionalism, if you want to be taken seriously! And self-evaluation leads towards professionalism. Moreover it’s clearly linked to quality control.

In Belgium we don’t have a tradition of self-evaluation; we have an external controlsystem.

Every 5 or 6 years the government sends a team of inspectors to the school.

Schools are growing towards more autonomy and the Flemisch inspectorate strives to encourage self-evaluation in schools in order to reach a meta-evaluation, i.e. an evaluation of the evaluation.

When a school gets more autonomy, one must lay out an own strategy and a clear schoolvision. Selfreflection or self-evaluation is an important attitude to realize how we are doing!

Society as such also sets new expectations for schools due to socio-economical and educational developments.

In our school we started with a lot of new projects, because we strive to be up-to-date. Nevertheless one has to be fully aware of an inherent danger:

“Schools that take on or are forced to take on every policy and innovation that comes along may look innovative at a distance, but actually have a severe case of ‘projectitis’ or ‘meaninglessness’.(Fullon)

In order to cope with al this innovation and respond to all the new expectations it’s very important to emphasize your own policy.

Both positive and negative aspects of change must be checked. And self-evaluation is a very good means to this end.

How did we start up self-evaluation?

We set out a team of 6 teachers and one principal to develop a strategy for introducing self-evaluation. We attended a special training and we prepared a developing plan with a strict time-schedule.

We worked on the sensitization of teachers; the transfer of information towards the participants is very important: “our plan must become theirs”.

In this team, we dealt with the so-called wh-questions: who, where, why, when, what and how.

We prepared newsletters for the teachers.

This team worked out the test and now coordinates all further action.

Which tools did we use?

To start with self-evaluation, we chose for a questionnaire, called IZES (instrument for self-evaluation of schools), developed by professor Van Peteghem, at the university of Antwerp (Belgium).

Why did we use IZES?

First of all we learned that it was one of the most effective instruments, based on school efficiency research.

It puts schoolmanagement and schoolpractice to the test.

One can compare the results with 102 other schools, so one gets an idea of how your school is doing.

It’s easy to use: it takes 40 minutes to fill out the questionnaire on a computer.

The feedback of this system is immediate though the interpretation of the results can take up a considerable amount of time. The questionnaire is only designed for principals and teachers, nor for pupils and parents, but most probably this is the right targetgroup to start up self-evaluation.

Results and Follow up

Everybody answered the questions on the seminar of October 2001.

Five days later, we started with the interpretation of the results with the ‘IZES-team’, an two external members.

We discussed the results in a teachers’meeting within 3 weeks following the questionnaire.

The self-evaluation revealed three subjects that needed some change.

In the teachers’meeting, the teachers have chosen a priority in these subjects. First they wanted a change in the cooperation of teachers within the same subject; secondly they proposed the theme of discipline and thirdly they wanted some action on changing their attitude towards pupil’s testresults.

The IZES-team worked out an actionplan and set up workgroups to deal with the 3 subject. In the schoolyear 2001-2002 we already started with a new structure for cooperation with teachers of the same subject. In 2002-2003 we designed and implemented several new projects to improve discipline and in 2003-2004 we’ll start with action-research, to bring about a change in the third theme.

In the IZES-team we also lay down criteria to evaluate our action plans.

We always try to communicate with the whole group about the changes, in teachers’meetings and by means of newsletters and very small questionnaires.

We discussed the whole project, the results, the changes…. with the parents and the schoolboard.

We use self-evaluation now in different groups too, like e.g. European exchanges.

To visualize the importance of reflections, we had installed a mirror in the teachers’room, to get the attention for a newsletter of the IZES-team;

We start an evaluation with pupils, leaving the school (at all ages). We prepared a questionnaire on computer for them. It’s integrated in our website.

Conclusion

Self-evaluation is gradually becoming a natural attitude in our school; not by everyone, not everywhere o at any time… be we’re not giving up.

Self-evaluation is a process that improves the teaching/educational quality of our school, and it can’t be stopped anymore.