Making self review work for you

Carol MutchEducation Review Office

June 2010

carol.mutch@ero.govt.nz

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Talk outline

• What is self review?• What are the elements of self review?• What might effective self review look like?• What does this mean for you?

Question 1

What is self review?

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Self review is…• Self review involves investigating evidence

about student outcomes and current ways of doing things to find out where improvement is needed. Planning for school improvement requires schools to set goals and targets for better student outcomes and make changes that are necessary to bring about those improvements.

(MoE Planning and Reporting, 2003)

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Or…• …the deliberate and on-going process of

finding out how well our practice enhances children’s learning and development. Review allows us to see which aspects of our practice are working well and what we could do better. As a result we can make decisions about what to do to improve. Through review our practice is transformed, and ultimately, our children’s learning benefits. (MoE, ECE, 2006)

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Or…

• Kura are most successful when there is an robust process of on-going internal review that leads to further improvement. Effective internal review focuses on the key goals for students and the evidence of the extent to which they are actually being achieved…[It is] rigorous, informed by excellence in evaluation practice, with findings based on evidence…

(ERO, Te Aho Matua, 2008)

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Or…• Self evaluation will collect and analyse a combination of

qualitative and quantitative data that helps leaders and teachers develop themselves, their practices, promote high performance, help support student progress and develop intervention programmes from a proactive perspective. (Paphitis, n.d.)

• Self evaluation is a dialogic process, a meeting of hearts and minds, a forging of new ways of doing, vital and continuing because it is the core of a school’s educational life. It is the essence of the learning community, the intelligent school, schools that learn.

(MacBeath, 1994)

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Summary. Self review is:

• Centred around giving all students the most successful educational experiences possible

• Set in a collaborative culture of continuous self reflection and constructive critique

• Self initiated by a desire to seek constant improvement – mostly planned but sometimes spontaneous

• Celebrating and sustaining what is working well while striving to improve what is not

• A willingness to embrace challenge and change• Setting long term goals and mid-term targets and

gathering rigorous and wide-ranging evidence to examine the extent to which these have been achieved

•

Question 2

What are the elements of self review?

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There are three types of self review:

• Strategic self review is long term and focused on key goals related to the school’s vision

• Regular self reviews are about “business-as-usual”. They are smaller, focused and on-going, feeding regular data into the strategic self review

• Emergent self reviews are in response to unplanned events or issues that have arisen. They are one-off spontaneous reviews but should fit with overall goals and link to other reviews

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Which link to each other

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Turning data into evidence…

• Schools gather lots of data – ‘hard’ (quantitative/ numerical) and ‘soft’; (qualitative/narrative). The raw or aggregated data is only the first level of analysis. It describes ‘what is’ or ‘what is happening’.

• The second level of analysis takes data and turns it into information. It explains ‘what this means’. It allows schools to make key statements or comparisons.

• The third level uses this information as evidence to support judgments (how well/to what extent), to make decisions (if this so then we need to…) and to prioritise (the most compelling need is…).

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Within a process…

• Select an area to investigate or to focus on• Gather wide ranging data• Make a diagnosis• Make a judgment• Determine an area for action• Design an action plan• Allocate resources and responsibilities• Implement the action plan• Provide progress reports• Determine the success of the action plan• Decide what to do next

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Of on-going review cycles…

Considering

Informing

MonitoringImplementing

Organising

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Balancing accountability and improvement

Complementary evaluation

Eg Assurance statements

Eg External audit

Eg Self review

Eg ERO education review

INTERNAL

EXTERNAL

ACOUNTABILITY IMPROVEMENT

Question 3

What does effective self review look like?

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What do we know about effective schools?

• National and international research, eg, BES• ERO’s Evaluation at a Glance: Effective

Schools:– A focus on the learner– Strong leadership within an inclusive culture– Effective teaching– Quality engagement with parents, whānau and

communities– Coherent and consistent policies and practices within

a cycle of continuous self review

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What have we learned from ECE?

• The ERO national evaluation of ECE self review tells us that common features of services with effective self review are:– Strong leadership to promote self review– Professional learning and development to

support self review– Stable, supportive and collaborative staff– Sound sustainable systems– Relevant resources and support systems

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What are we learning from ERO’s good practice in self review case studies?

• Importance of leadership to drive the vision• Importance of ‘buy-in” from all involved• Belief that students can achieve• Belief that teachers can make a difference• Importance of the big picture• Commitment to the long term• Importance of prioritising• Remembering to celebrate and build on successes• Importance of gathering useful data and analysing it

effectively• Using strengths from in and outside the school• There is no one way- each school and community is

unique but we can learn from each other

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What are we learning from our workshops?

Schools do it differently:

Question 4

What does this mean for you?

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ERO’s differentiated review cycle• Rather than being based on a “one-size-fits-all”

three yearly- cycle, the differentiated review cycle is based on ERO’s confidence that the school is providing a quality education for all students and maintaining an on-going process of continuous self improvement

• Not confident/not yet confident (12-24 month return)• Confident (three year return)• Highly confident (4-5 year return)

• Self review is the tool through which schools monitor and sustain this continuous improvement and provide evidence of what they are doing and what is working for their students

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ERO’s updated evaluation indicators

• WhakataukīKo te Tamaiti the Pūtake o te

Kaupapa• Six dimensions:

– Student learning: engagement, progress and achievement

– Governing the school– Leading and managing the school– Inclusive school culture– Engaging families and communities

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Support available• From ERO

• Framework for reviews• Evaluation Indicators• Good practice case studies (not yet available)• Evaluation at a Glance: Effective Schools (not yet available)• Board/Whānau Assurance Statement Checklist• National Evaluations• Getting the most out of your ERO review booklets• Workshops and cluster meetings

• From other sources:• MoE self review tools for National Standards• MoE Kiwi Leadership material• MoE governance resource• Commercial tools• Local advisors/consultants• Each other!

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To conclude

• Be assured that self review is not new and much of what you already do fits under that umbrella

• Make on-going self review, reflection and action a “state of mind” in your school

• Ensure smaller review cycles feed data into strategic self review in a coherent way

• ERO are not looking for particular ways of doing things but at the quality of the evidence and the robustness of the processes that you use for your decision making

• Ask yourself : “How do you know that you make a difference for every student in your school?”