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How Good is Our School? (4th Edition)
- 1. How good isour school? (4th edition) Professional learning events November 2015
- 2. How good isour school? the journey:
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- 4. Aims: • Increase yourknowledge and understanding of effective self-evaluation using HGIOS?4. • Support your professional reflections on using the quality indicators to evaluate and improve your work • Provide updates on key national developments and consider how HGIOS?4 contributes to these: Scottish Attainment Challenge National Improvement Framework National Improvement Hub • Enable you to contribute to the development of the national improvement hub • Support networking and on-going professional dialogue about self- evaluation and improvement.
- 5. Effective self-evaluation usingHow good is our school? (4th edition)
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- 7. How are we doing? How do we know? Whatare we going to do now? p.9
- 8. 2002 2007 2015 Self-evaluation• Processes of self- evaluation. • Monitoring and evaluation by promoted staff. • Reporting on standards and quality. • Commitment to self-evaluation. • Management of self-evaluation. • School improvement. • Collaborative approaches to self-evaluation. • Analysis and evaluation of intelligence and data. • Impact on learners successes and achievements. How good is our school? What makes effective self-evaluation?
- 9. “Making sound judgements about theimpact on learners should be central to self- evaluation” p.10
- 10. How are we doing? How do we know? Whatare we going to do now? p.20
- 11. An evaluation ofexcellent means that “This aspect of the school’s work is outstanding and sector- leading. The experiences and achievements of all children and young people are of a very high quality. An evaluation of excellent represents an outstanding standard of provision which exemplifies very best practice based on achieving equity and inclusion and a deep professional understanding which is being shared beyond the school to support system-wide improvement. It implies that very high levels of performance are sustainable and will be maintained.” p. 62
- 12. “This new self-evaluation frameworkhighlights partnership and collaboration as significant features of a highly-effective school and a high performing learning system” p.7
- 13. Collaborative approaches toself-evaluation: p.10
- 14. Group Discussion: 10mins In mixed groups of HTs/DHTs/PTs/CTs focus on the level 5 illustration for QI 1.1 (p.20) How is your current approach to self- evaluation similar/different from the approaches described in the level 5 illustration?
- 15. Further discussion: 10mins: Choose a theme • Theme 1: How do you ensure “a shared understanding of the school’s strengths and improvement needs”? What are the benefits and challenges of partnership/collaborative approaches to self-evaluation? • Theme 2: What types of intelligence and data do you currently use? Which aspects of the illustration are your current strengths? What might you need to improve on? • Theme 3: To what extent do you currently ensure all stakeholders are engaged in self-evaluation and take responsibility for continuous improvement?
- 16. Taking a closerlook at leadership and management.
- 17. “The most successfuleducation systems invest in developing their teachers as reflective, accomplished and enquiring professionals who are able, not simply to teach successfully in relation to current external expectations, but who have the capacity to engage fully with the complexities of education and to be key actors in shaping and leading educational change.” Teaching Scotland's Future: Report of a review of teacher education in Scotland, G Donaldson, Scottish Government (2011)
- 18. “Self-evaluation is anintegral part of the Professional Update process. As part of engagement in the Professional Update process individuals should self evaluate using the Professional Standards relevant to them and their context. But what should this self-evaluation look like? Self-evaluation can take many forms and may occur at various stages in the professional learning journey. It will also involve a range of sources to help inform you.” http://www.gtcs.org.uk/standards/Self-evaluation/self-evaluation.aspx
- 19. “Self-evaluation and reflectionare an integral part of leadership development and are the starting point for engagement with the Framework for Educational Leadership.” Self-evaluation should support you to: •Reflect on what you have done •Think about what you might do next •Consider your own progress and development •Deeply understand your professional practice, your professional learning and the impact of this on your thinking, professional actions, those you work with/support and the pupils and their learning http://www.scelframework.com/about-us/
- 20. Leadership and management How good isour leadership and approach to improvement? Quality Indicator Themes: 1.1 Self-evaluation for self-improvement • Collaborative approaches to self-evaluation • Analysis and evaluation of intelligence and data • Ensuring impact on learners’ successes and achievements 1.2 Leadership of learning • Professional engagement and collegiate working • Impact of career-long professional learning • Children and young people leading learning 1.3 Leadership of change • Developing a shared vision, values and aims relevant to the school and its community • Strategic planning for continuous improvement • Implementing improvement and change 1.4 Leadership and management of staff • Governance framework • Building and sustaining a professional staff team • Staff wellbeing and pastoral support 1.5 Management of resources to promote equity • Management of finance for learning • Management of resources and environment for learning P.16
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- 23. Group activity: 40mins Choose either QI 1.2 (p22) or QI 1.3 (p.24) Focus on the themes of the level 5 illustration for about 10 minutes each. Record aspects of the level 5 illustration you think are (a) easy to evidence in your school/department/class (b) quite difficult to evidence Discuss the reasons for your opinion and how you can address the areas of difficulty.
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- 26. Elevator Conversation –2 minutes! Which aspect of the triangle do you tend to favour in your self-evaluation? •Quantitative data •People’s Views •Direct Observation
- 27. Level 5 illustrationbased on each theme Features of highly-effective practice Challenge questions Self –evaluation: looking inwards Where are we now? How do we know? What should we do now? P.9
- 28. Taking a closerlook
- 29. Group activity: 20mins • Choose a Learning Provision or a Successes and Achievements QI that you feel confident is an area of strength. • Focus on the features of highly-effective practice for that QI and use them to reflect on what has been achieved in your school/LA. • Work together to produce a set of specific features of highly-effective that you feel exist in your own contexts.
- 30. Challenge questions: • CollegiateWorking. • Enquiring Practitioners. • Well-informed change. • Professional Dialogue. • Sustainable Partnerships • Learning Culture. • Creative improvement. • Looking inwards, outwards and forwards.
- 31.
Editor's Notes
- #3 Each version will appear one at a time: FIRST EDITION: First published in 1996, How Good is Our School? originally emerged from a desire for increased transparency around the assessment criteria used in school inspections. SECOND and THIRD EDITION Over the course of a second edition in 2002 and a third in 2007, the framework has evolved, proving its value as a tool for on-going self-evaluation and promotion of best practice. The How good is our school? brand has been recognised in Scotland and internationally as an essential element of school improvement. As the toolkit itself has evolved so has our approach to self-evaluation. FOURTH EDITION It is almost a decade since the development of the previous edition and so some might consider it well overdue. The new QI framework and accompanying toolkit will support schools in all sectors to take the next step in moving from improvement through self-evaluation, to placing self-evaluation at the heart of self-improvement. It reflects our aspirations for increased collaboration and partnership to spread our best practice more widely and to secure improvement that impacts positively on every child and young person in each and every one of our schools.
- #4 This fourth edition of How good is our school is available to download from the Education Scotland website. We encourage you communicate your views and share your professional learning on Twitter using the hashtag on the screen. Through events like this one, we are encouraging school communities to spend time over the coming months familiarising themselves with it and promoting the new framework and encouraging practitioners at all levels to make use of it. Over the next few months we will continue to work with Scottish Government to work out how the new QI framework in HGIOS?4 can best support schools and local authorities to gather evidence about the quality of their work in relation to the various components of the new National Improvement Framework and use this to prioritise school and system wide improvement.
- #5 These are the aims for today – Much of the programme focuses on using the new quality indicator framework.
- #6 Handover slide
- #7 The new HGIOS framework is a bit different from the previous version. 15 Qis – more streamlined – we hope this will encourage schools to reconsider approaches to self-evaluation and move away from the current approach in many schools ie on ly looking at the five “inspection” Qis. Each divided into themes Highlight a few of the QIs and interesting themes: self-evaluation for self-improvement Leadership of learning Learning, teaching and assessment Family learning Transitions Partnerships 3 outcome QIs – demonstrate our commitment to securing a range of outcomes for Scotland’s children and young people The arrows and the order of the framework are significant – TSF - Leadership is significant factor in quality of school improvement. 1.1 self-evaluation – first QI in the framework – makes it key to school improvement – starting point is to know where you are at.
- #8 The front cover of HGIOS?4 is badged with this “inwards, outwards, forwards” this diagram. It illustrates the significant link between effective self-evaluation and the three key questions which lie at the heart of effective self-evaluation: (each question comes up one at a time): How are we doing? The first stage of effective self-evaluation is knowing yourself really well – looking inwards. The QI illustrations in HGIOS are designed to help you reflect on this. How do we know? An important aspect of answering this question is looking outwards to see how your practice relates to what is happening elsewhere. This means looking to other establishments locally and nationally and considering national and international research. The features of highly-effective practice in the new HGIOS toolkit are also designed to help with looking outwards. What are we going to do now? Answering this question requires a forward looking approach. What changes will have the right level and type of impact on your learners? What skills, knowledge and attributes will your learners need in the future? What needs to be different about your leadership and learning provision? The challenge questions linked to each of the new quality indicators can support your thinking in this respect.
- #9 Let’s have a quick look at how our understanding of self-evaluation has developed in Scotland over the various iterations of How Good is our school? 2002 – the emphasis was very much a top-down approach, emphasis on getting the processes right – QA calendars, HTs coming in to watch lessons – lots of discussions with Professional Associations (Unions) at that time. Development of S & Q reports. 2007 – More emphasis on whole school culture of self-evaluation. Notion of reflective practitioners. Important role of PTs/Middle management and more focus on links to school improvement planning. 2015 – very clear focus on “responsibility of all” and a collaborative approach – collaboration within schools, between schools, across clusters, with partners and wider learning community and sometimes with schools across different local authority boundaries – this has been the success of our recent School Improvement Partnership Programme and is an aspect we aim to encourage more of as part of the Scottish Attainment Challenge.
- #10 This new edition of HGIOS strongly emphasises the need for these judgements to be made collaboratively Recognises the way that our learning provision is changing. Learning takes place in many contexts within and outwith the traditional school classroom. Learning is not solely delivered by class teachers – classroom assistants, parents, partner agencies, other staff across the school and by learners themselves. Evaluating the impact must therefore be a shared responsibility. Self-evaluation is therefore not about having great checklists and ticking off things on a school QA calendar – its about ensuring you use the processes to weigh up what’s working well for learners and what’s not working so well. It’s about using the processes to find out where we should prioritise resources including staff, time and energy to focus on the making the right improvements
- #11 A subtle but important change in the title of this QI Self improvement relates to the concept of a self-improving system which is really important within Scottish education. Everything we know about Scottish education tells us that we are on a journey from GOOD to GREAT. We have many examples of good and very good practice across our education system and we therefore have much that is worthy of sharing across the country. The concept of a self-improving system means that we should be able to reach the next level by improving our partnership working and getting better at sharing practice, challenging each other and engaging in much more collaborative approaches to self-evaluation and improvement That’s why the first theme of this QI is “Collaborative approaches to self-evaluation” It’s also why we have slightly amended the wording of EXCELLENT within the 6 point scale.
- #14 This diagram again from the p.10 of HGIOS?4 aims to illustrate the notion of building up an evidence-base by involving all members of the school community. Class teachers Stage partners Building up whole school picture Working collaboratively across a cluster/neighbourhood and with partners Local Authority
- #15 Two parts to this discussion: This first part is about reflecting on current practice and familiarising yourself with the new QI illustrations.
- #16 These questions are focused on each of the individual themes. Work in pairs and choose a theme to focus on.
- #17 Handover slide
- #18 A key message of the Teaching Scotland’s Future report was that the quality of leadership is a defining factor in ensuring high quality provision and high quality outcomes for learners. Over recent years in Scottish education many schools have worked very hard to embed the concept of distributed leadership and the notion of leadership at all levels is now firmly embedded within the GTCS Standards from the Standard for Initial Teacher Education through to the Standard for Headship. Nationally we have now embarked on some significant work aimed at supporting improvements in school leadership through the establishment of the Scottish College for Educational Leadership – a new programme for aspiring headteachers and the recent publication of the Framework for Educational Leadership. The next couple of slides give a flavour of key messages from the GTCS and SCEL in relation to the importance of self-evaluation.
- #21 Moving on from self-evaluation and self-improvement there are 4 other QIs in the Leadership and Management suite. These QIs have been developed very much in line with the GTCS professional standards. You should see similar language and that should mean that you are able to use these QIs to help you reflect on your individual leadership style and to link this with Professional Update, PRD and defining your CLPL needs. Across these QIs there is a strong focus on Collegiate working Importance of strengthening leadership at all levels and across the entire school community Ensuring impact from career long professional learning Need for strong strategic leadership which takes good account of key national priorities – eg. Learning for sustainability, developing the young workforce, ensuring equity and inclusion. The need to ensure children and young people play a part in leading learning and school improvement Importance of a strong relationship and shared understanding of school governance structures and lines of accountabiltiy
- #22 Although inspectors will mostly continue to use whole QIs for the purposes of evaluation during inspections, it is not always necessary to do this. The inclusion of illustrations related to each theme within the QI creates an opportunity for taking a closer look at very particular aspects of your work focusing in on a single theme or a range of themes from across several QIs using the sort of approach illustrated in this diagram. Using this approach you can encourage individual and collaborative self-evaluation using a focused question as the starting point – this encourages everyone in the school community to engage in self-evaluation. Some questions might lend themselves to reflection against a single QI a theme within a QI and others might be better answered by pulling out a range of QI themes and creating a bespoke template for evidence gathering. For example you might wish to look across the leadership QIs and pull out some references to sustainability or equity or collegiate working. Appendix 1 of the HGIOS publication gives some examples of how you might get started with such an approach.
- #23 We would suggest that PTs/CTs might wish to focus on Leadership of Learning HTs/DHTs might wish to focus on Leadership of Change
- #25 Handover slide
- #26 The process of triangulation remains an important aspect of self-evaluation and making judgments about “where are we now?” The quality of the evidence gathered during the triangulation process will underpin the overall evaluation. We shouldn’t jump to conclusions based on any one piece of evidence – best to dig a bit deeper/cast the net wider and look to see how other evidence stacks up. Eg questionnaires only really give us a starting point – can often depend on the mood of the person completing it at that point in time – could highlight particular issues for further investigation through focus group discussions and observations etc Questionnaire responses often don’t give us any indication of exactly what needs improved but they can highlight aspects that we should explore further. Triangulation is therefore really important and using a range of evidence is crucial.
- #27 Reflect on how well you use the process of triangulation to ensure your self-evaluation judgements are robust and evidence based. Does the answer depend on what level you are working at? What are the benefits/challenges of trying to triangulate evidence?
- #28 You can see how this looks across all the pages of the QI toolkit. No longer describing weak. Illustrations are generic – apply to all sectors – where are we now? Features are examples of real practice we have found in different schools – some very sector specific. Not to be a checklist – instead schools should identify and pull together their own features of highly-effective practice as evidence to underpin self-evaluation – How do we know? Challenge questions – support professional dialogue – next steps – what should we do now?
- #29 This next discussion session gives you the opportunity to spend some time looking at the QI these two sections of HGIOS. Working with a few colleagues you will have some time to explore the features of effective practice and challenge questions. Remember the arrows linking each organiser on the main framework diagram The quality of leadership and management will determine the quality of the learning provision experienced by your children and young people. The quality of both of these things will determine the quality of children and young people’s successes and achievements. Highlight the new Qis in these sections: Safeguarding – based on national guidance issued in 2014 Curriculum – based on current guidance in the inspection advice note Learning, teaching and Assessment – recognising the inter-relationship of these aspects what happens in the classroom Personalised Support – Universal support – responsibility of all – strong focus on wellbeing, rights and supporting all young people to take responsibility for their learning. Inclusion at the heart of this QI. Family Learning – strong links to raising attainment – impact on parents and families = impact on the children and young people in your classes. Transitions - important emphasis on curriculum transitions and progression in learning. Pastoral we know is usually strong – this is linked into personalised support. Partnerships – emphasis on collaboration including in professional learning activities, sustaining high-quality partnerships. Successes and achievements – clearly raising attainment and achievement is still and always will be important but this section now includes a much clearer and broader set of outcomes for children and young people in Scotland.
- #30 The key message here is that the features of highly-effective practice are only a starting point for reflection. They are not to be used as a checklist of “very good” – they are examples only. The overall aim of including them in HGIOS is to prompt reflection/dialogue and for schools to consider what features of highly effective practise look like within your own specific context. These might be unique to schools but increasingly if there is effective collaboration between schools we should be able identify features of highly-effective practise more consistently across clusters and across local authorities. The importance of identifying these during self-evaluation is not simply for grading against the 6 point scale but to know what is worth sharing and how your work can be used to support system wide improvement.
- #31 The list of bullet points are phrases taken from the illustrations in the Leadership and management QIs They highlight that important aspect of school improvement we highlighted right at the start of the day when we were looking at the self-evaluation QI – it’s everyone’s responsibility. That includes leaders at all levels of the school community, teaching and non-teaching staff, children and young people, parents and the wide range of partners working with the school. The challenge questions are designed to promote this collaborative self-evaluation. Again they are a starting point only – over time we hope you will begin to create your own Challenge questions to support professional dialogue on particular themes and aspects of your work. They don’t need to be for a whole QI.