Validated
self-evaluation
Angus Council Educational Psychology
Service
15 January 2016
Contents
Page
1.
What is validated self-evaluation in Educational Psychology
Services?
1
2.
What was validated self-evaluation in Angus Council Educational
Psychology Service?
1
3.
What did HM Inspectors learn about the quality of self-evaluation
in Angus Council Educational Psychology Service?
2
4.
What does the Educational Psychology Service plan to do next?
4
5.
What is Angus Council Educational Psychology Service’s
capacity for improvement?
4
1. What is validated self-evaluation in Educational Psychology Services?
Validated self-evaluation (VSE) is an evaluative activity which supports and challenges
the work of Educational Psychology Services (EPS) by working collaboratively. It
involves a partnership between the education authority, EPS and HM Inspectors,
Education Scotland. In EPS the VSE focuses on two key themes.


Learning and Teaching.
Partnership Working.
The themes reflect the Scottish Government’s national priorities and relate to the
contributions made by EPS to raising attainment, addressing disadvantage and
supporting and implementing, Getting it Right For Every Child (GIRFEC). Both themes
also allow EPS to evidence the impact and outcomes of early intervention and
prevention across the full range of their service delivery.
In addition to the core themes, services can choose an additional one to reflect their
own context. An additional area may relate to the core themes or reflect other quality
indicators which impact on the service’s ability to improve outcomes for its stakeholders.
For example, leadership, or the delivery of the five Currie (2002)1 functions of
consultation and advice, assessment, intervention, professional development and
research and development.
2. What was validated self-evaluation in Angus Council Educational Psychology
Service?
Angus Council Educational Psychology Service (ACEPS), working closely with the
people directorate and key partners, used the VSE process to deepen their existing
knowledge and understanding of their strengths and areas for development in a number
of key areas of service delivery. The service vision is using psychology to improve the
wellbeing and educational outcomes of all children and young people in Angus. They
support the children and young people’s service in GIRFEC by providing positive,
nurturing and inclusive environments to support learning and development. They
selected two themes from their self-evaluation which contributed strongly to the
authority’s priorities:


the effectiveness of the ACEPS supporting the attainment of children and young
people with literacy difficulties in Angus; and
the effectiveness of the ACEPS in working in partnership to meet the needs of
Looked After Children (LAC).
The service recognised the challenge of evolving service delivery within a climate of
financial constraint and was keen to use the VSE process to explore areas where they
considered they could make a positive impact and continue to prioritise in the future.
For the VSE process, ACEPS selected two areas of work at different stages in the
self-evaluation cycle. Their work on precision teaching had undergone self-evaluation,
which had engaged stakeholders and partners and was backed by the evidence
1
Currie (2002) Review of Provision of Educational Psychology Services in Scotland.
Scottish Executive.
1
obtained from implementation science methodology2. ACEPS’ partnership theme was
at an earlier stage of development because the service had taken on a new lead role for
LAC in Angus and those placed outwith the authority. They had developed procedural
guidance and were keen to establish robust processes for evaluating work in this area.
The service wanted to build on their strong partnership working and look more closely at
the impact and outcomes which had been achieved as a result of these interventions.
Each themed group comprised of relevant partners and agencies, for example, senior
officers in the people directorate, quality improvement officers, children and families
service managers, primary and secondary head teachers and allied health
professionals. Each group was led by a main grade educational psychologist. Almost
all members of ACEPS were involved in the themed groups and all were involved in the
preparation for the VSE.
In planning for the VSE, a wide range of activities was put in place. Activities included
focus groups, visits to schools, and individual interviews with professionals. In working
with focus groups, the service used an effective carousel approach which allowed larger
groups of stakeholders to contribute. After each activity, the themed groups reflected
on what they had learnt, and began to identify strengths and areas for improvement.
The service brought together the theme groups’ leads across the VSE process to share
their findings across both themes. In this way, theme group members were able to see
emerging strengths and areas for further development across and within each theme,
and in relation to the overall self-evaluation process. Through such joint evaluative
activity, Education Scotland staff was able to assess the rigour of the EPS’
self-evaluation processes and the robustness of the evidence used to evaluate
performance and service delivery.
3. What did HM Inspectors learn about the quality of self-evaluation in Angus
Council Educational Psychology Service?
During the VSE, it became clear that ACEPS was working hard to add value to work in
literacy and partnership working within the people directorate. Throughout the VSE
process the service engaged in honest and challenging dialogue with their partners and
with the Education Scotland team. Service team members, in their themed groups,
demonstrated rigorous and objective analysis of the evidence gathered during the VSE
self-evaluation activities. The Education Scotland team found that the service’s range
of self-evaluation methods such as the use of three Horizons methodology, plan, do,
study, act, focus groups, questionnaires, person centred planning PATH and
implementation science came together as an effective range of evaluative activities.
The open participation and engagement of partners and their ability to reflect on their
learning was a strength of this VSE process. The theme leads created a supportive
ethos for partners who were empowered to open up and explore areas for improvement.
The service benefited from the challenge and questioning provided by partners and
responded positively by reflecting deeply on their practice and the implications for future
engagement. Theme leads and educational psychologists asked insightful questions,
listened and responded respectfully.
2
Implementation science is the study of methods to promote the integration of
research findings and evidence into policy and practice.
2
The Education Scotland team found evidence of impact on improving children and
young people’s literacy skills. For instance, there was good evidence that children
receiving precision teaching showed improved spelling scores within the precision
teaching sessions. The Education Scotland team agreed with ACEPS that further data
gathering on transfer to the classroom would be valuable.
The service also demonstrated good work and creative ideas in engaging with partners
in multi-agency teams to improve planning, decision making and outcomes for LAC and
young people. This is a new role for the EPS and joint working is being developed.
Pupil and parent evaluations are part of ACEPS’ annual calendar of self-evaluation.
The service recognised that more opportunity for sampling a wider range of stakeholder
views, and in particular those of children and young people would have further
strengthened and enhanced their self-evaluation.
The precision teaching theme was a systemic piece of work which illustrated particular
features of strong self-evaluation. It relied heavily on research principles and evidence
based practice. Partners valued highly the research skills and knowledge that ACEPS
brought to the scale-up of precision teaching. In addition, they valued the
implementation framework around the approach and found the training and coaching
aspect essential for supporting the scale-up. The VSE process highlighted the potential
benefits of rebranding the Angus Dyslexia procedures to emphasise the applicability of
the procedures to the wider group of children experiencing literacy difficulties. They
agreed that a re-launch of the procedures in collaboration with partners in Schools and
Learning to promote their use more widely among class teachers would be beneficial.
The importance of strengthening links between the EPS and colleagues in Schools and
Learning was accurately identified by colleagues in both services to improve impact and
sustainability of the work of ACEPS at the universal level.
ACEPS recognised the need to ensure that they built into the planning process an
impact assessment, sustainability measures, and where appropriate an exit strategy.
During the week ACEPS became clearer with partners about the added value they
could bring to the directorate. For example, working more systemically with schools and
the authority to use psychology to inform a wider range of practice to raise attainment
for all. Senior leaders within the authority also appreciated the opportunity provided by
the VSE for further reflection about the wider role of ACEPS at strategic and universal
levels. These are key areas for further improvement.
The ACEPS’ reflective dialogue and the systematic recording of the outcomes from the
VSE activities were highly effective in improving the quality of their self-evaluation and
capacity to triangulate evidence. As a result, the Education Scotland team was
confident that the service had effective processes for self-evaluation to bring about
continuous improvement.
3
4. What does the Educational Psychology Service plan to do next?
The service identified strengths and areas for development within each of the
two themed areas. These can be found on the ACEPS’ website.
Education Scotland and ACEPS agreed on the following next steps to improve their
self-evaluation processes further:




continue to build capacity in others to deliver key outcomes, building in a needs
analysis and a clear exit strategy for the EPS;
continue to utilise and build upon the psychological knowledge and expertise of the
service to make a stronger strategic contribution to local and national policy
initiatives and strategic priorities;
further strengthen communication with stakeholders using a range of methods
including digital and social media where appropriate; and
extend the role of ACEPS to impact more widely across all children and young
people and at more systemic levels.
5. What is Angus Council Educational Psychology Service’s capacity for
improvement?
Education Scotland is confident that ACEPS has a strong capacity for continuous
improvement. The strong leadership of the PEP and the distributive leadership evident
within the team have impacted positively on the quality of the service delivered to
children, young people and their families. The positive service ethos, supported and
maintained with formal and informal peer and group supervision has acted, and will
continue to act, as a resilience factor during a period of change. ACEPS together with
their senior managers have a clear agenda for change as a result of their
self-evaluation, which has now been validated by Education Scotland during the VSE.
Nicola Robertson
Lead Facilitator
15 January 2016
Further information about the EPS VSE reports and self-evaluation can be found on the
service’s website
http://www.angus.gov.uk/downloads/download/312/educational_psychology_service__validated_self_evaluation
4
Education Scotland
Denholm House
Almondvale Business Park
Almondvale Way
Livingston EH54 6GA
T +44 (0)131 244 4330
E enquiries@educationscotland.gov.uk
www.educationscotland.gov.uk