Western Mail

How schools can assess their work

As Wales prepares for its new curriculum schools need to look at what works and what doesn’t. A joint project between Estyn and the OECD aims to do that. MEILYR ROWLANDS, Chief Inspector of Education and Training in Wales, outlines what is being done

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PRACTICAL support for teachers is central to helping improve our schools. Providing real, hands-on advice and concrete examples of what works, and what doesn’t, is essential in developing a common understand­ing of how to improve the learning experience­s in our classrooms.

That’s why Estyn and the OECD are leading a project to develop a national “toolkit” outlining effective self-evaluation processes for schools.

The toolkit will equip schools with practical ways of observing lessons, scrutinisi­ng books, carrying out learning walks, listening to learners and many more methods of evaluating a school’s own work.

The developmen­t of a self-evaluation toolkit began in spring. The OECD, headteache­rs from schools across Wales, the regional consortia and local authoritie­s, are building on the effective practice in our schools to ensure that the toolkit will be helpful to schools and support continuous improvemen­t.

Working closely with Welsh Government and other partners, we are striving to ensure that this project supports the national mission to deliver a new curriculum in Wales.

We are also aligning the work with developmen­ts such as schools as learning organisati­ons and the new profession­al standards for teaching and leadership.

How can a school know what it is doing well and where it needs to improve? It’s vital that teachers, headteache­rs and the school community feel ownership of its improvemen­t processes. Everyone needs to understand the purpose of self-evaluation and see its value in supporting the learning and wellbeing of learners.

It’s good that there is already excellence in this regard in our schools in Wales. As part of the project, we’re working with many of these schools and alongside headteache­rs to join up what we’re doing with curriculum developmen­t.

We’ve already identified practice that schools should continue to do. Building a positive learning culture is an important element. The culture should be centred around school improvemen­t and help to ensure that improvemen­t processes are underpinne­d by respect and trust.

Being frank, open and taking an honest look in the mirror is essential. Leaders shouldn’t be afraid to share learning about what happens in their school – warts and all – rather than glossing over it because it might lead to the schools being viewed negatively.

The journey to excellence is not always easy, but the best schools don’t work for an external audience or focus on the quality of paperwork. They celebrate success, have a longterm vision, and reflect their school’s strengths and areas for improvemen­t honestly.

As education reform gathers pace in Wales, it’s not just schools that are expected to change. At Estyn we are also exploring how our work will evolve to ensure it aligns with the developmen­t of the self-evaluation toolkit and other national priorities.

We’ve already amended some of our inspection practices. In our reports, we’ve adapted our approach to writing about self-evaluation.

We’re keen to emphasise the importance of evaluating the impact of processes on improving leadership, provision, standards and wellbeing rather than quality of the documentat­ion itself.

The work of the self-evaluation project so far has focused on teaching, leadership and wellbeing. We now want to hear from those working in schools and soon will be consulting more widely on our work to date. The new self-evaluation and improvemen­t processes will be rolled out in 2019-20.

The first stage of this will be a training programme to share with schools the outcomes of the project. In the meantime, schools should continue to focus on their self-evaluation, placing their learners’ needs and experience­s at its core.

■ The Organisati­on for Economic Co-operation and Developmen­t is an intergover­nmental economic organisati­on based in Paris. It runs the Pisa tests for 15 year olds to compare education standards among members.

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