Practical Whole School Self-Evaluation: Part 4
This document is a practical guide to self-evaluation for leadership teams within primary and secondary schools in England (UK), with a particular focus on the Self-Evaluation Form (SEF) and Ofsted Inspection.
Extract from Part 4: Improving your skills
The best development work is done through activities which are closely linked to your own immediate needs. You will probably gain most from working to improve your own self-evaluation practice and materials, so my suggestions assume you have a SEF in some form to work on:
- complete the “School in a nutshell” sheet (Appendix C) for your school. On the basis of these two sheets and the Achievement and Standards and Personal Development and Well-being sections of the Evaluation Schedule, arrive at judgements for standards and achievement and, as far as you can, for personal development and well-being for your school.
- quick but brutal assessment of sections 3 and 4:
As an SLT, take the sections in turn. Quickly go through what you’ve written, marking each in the margin as follows:
D – beside each occurrence of a description of what the school provides or does
O – for each outcome - a statement of what pupils achieve, do, know or understand
A good SEF will have many Os and few Ds.
You can make this more sophisticated by adding
A – for analysis (eg an explanation of the main message/s from data/survey information)
H - for hypothesis (a suggestion why the outcomes are as they are)
J – for a judgement about how good the thing being considered is in your school.
Good SEFs will have some of each of these in each section – Hs may be linked to section 5 or 6.
c. quick but brutal assessment of sections 5 and 6
As above, but use
P – for an unsupported platitude (eg “the school develops all pupils’ spiritual awareness”)
E – for an evidence based statement or a link to a pupil outcome (eg “behaviour is good as shown by lesson observations and reported by visitors to the school”; “learning is good in most lessons in English – see test/exam outcomes, pupil survey evidence, annual review)
S/W – a statement of specific strengths and weaknesses in the provision
J – for a judgement about how good the thing being considered is in your school.
Good SEFs will have no Ps and some S/Ws, Es and Js in each section.
d. even quicker assessment of 5a – teaching and learning
Mark all evaluation or judgements about learning (not teaching) with an L.
Mark evaluations of teaching (not learning) with a T.
Good SEFs will have at least as many Ls as Ts
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