Validated
self-evaluation
South Ayrshire Council Educational
Psychology Services
15 April 2016
Contents
Page
1.
What is validated self-evaluation in Educational Psychology
Services?
1
2.
What was validated self-evaluation in South Ayrshire Council’s
Educational Psychology Service?
1
3.
What did HM Inspectors learn about the quality of self-evaluation
in South Ayrshire Council’s Educational Psychology Service?
2
4.
What does the Educational Psychology Service plan to do next?
3
5.
What is South Ayrshire Council’s 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 (EA), EPS and HM Inspectors,
Education Scotland. In EPS the VSE focuses on two key themes.
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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. 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 South Ayrshire Council’s Educational
Psychology Service?
South Ayrshire Council’s Educational Psychology Service (SAEPS) took a closer look
at:


the impact of consultation in improving outcomes for children and young people,
with a focus on the most vulnerable groups; and
the psychological service role in the development of nurture and nurture
approaches across education; social work and health.
Both themes emerged from their self-evaluation. In the area of consultation, they found
that two thirds of their time was spent on consultation but they were uncertain whether
this approach improved learning and teaching and outcomes for children and young
people. They therefore wanted to explore during the VSE a number of challenging
questions such as:




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what aspects of consultation has been effective and why?
how can the service use other partners’ evaluations as evidence of impact?
what data was available at service, authority, school and partner levels which they
could make better use of? and
what models of consultation do other EPSs use and how effective are they?
Currie (2002), Review of Provision of Educational Psychology Services in Scotland.
Scottish Executive.
1
Nurture groups and nurturing approaches were well established by the EPS. However,
they wanted to use the VSE to evaluate the value added by the service in training
others and use the evidence to inform future capacity building approaches with
partners. Key questions explored by the EPS during the course of the VSE were:




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is the nurture approach building capacity in staff, children and young people?
how does the service sustain and improve on the capacity built through training
staff?
how is the service using a nurturing approach currently with parents and carers?
how is the service measuring the long term impact of Nurture and a nurturing
approach?
does ‘How Nurturing is our School’ fit South Ayrshire’s context? and
strategically, how does the service sustain the nurture approach?
A good range of partners were involved as core team members and in focus groups to
help with the service’s self-evaluation. For example, a quality improvement manager, a
senior nurse manager, inclusion coordinator, data analyst, young people from a local
high school, headteachers, and educational psychologists (EPs) from neighboring
authorities. A wide range of activities was undertaken including consultation with young
people and parents, focus groups with partners and stakeholders including Social
Services, Community Learning and Development (CLD), Health and EP colleagues
from outwith South Ayrshire, education staff representing schools and establishments,
and centre staff. A range of methods was used to gather information including
Appreciative Inquiry and structured discussion with young people. The themed groups
were chaired by EPs.
3. What did HM Inspectors learn about the quality of self-evaluation in South
Ayrshire Council’s Educational Psychology Service?
The EPS adds value to the Education Department’s vision, values and aims, as
evidenced by the service’s self-evaluation report and the discussions which took place
with a range of stakeholders during the VSE. For example, they provide strategic input
into improvement strategy groups such as Dyslexia Friendly Schools. They are also
engaged in operationalising the EAs vision by building capacity in others. For example,
by training a range of partners such as care managers, teachers and senior managers
to use nurturing approaches to help develop positive relationships in a range of contexts
within South Ayrshire. These approaches and the quality of training provided, were
reported as being very helpful in improving practice. Care workers provided very good
case study examples where staff had been able to prevent young people being received
into care by applying nurturing principles. The service should consider how they can
use these single case examples to build a more robust evidence base of outcomes
resulting from their training of others (i.e. capacity building).
SAEPS’s self-evaluation of the key themes was evaluative and based on good
evidence. Their analysis of existing data provided a good basis for them to identify
strengths and possible areas for development. For example, they had very good
standardised measures to demonstrate the outcomes of nurture classes. They now
need to see if the approaches have the same impact when used outwith the nurture
classrooms. They also identified the need to look at measures which were not centered
on child deficits, but which took account of environmental influences such as parental
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involvement, teacher engagement, and curricula barriers. The VSE activities helped
them to validate their self-evaluation and to identify higher order strengths and areas for
improvement.
Stakeholders valued consultation with the EPS. They particularly appreciated the use
of solution orientated approaches and the quality of professional dialogue led by the EP.
The relationship between the EP and the lead professional was felt to be of key
importance during a consultation. Almost all stakeholders reported that EPs offered
skills that helped to change the dynamic of case discussions resulting in greater clarity
about next steps. During the VSE it was ascertained that the service needed to
communicate better what they meant by consultation, and develop clarity and
consistency around partners’ roles and how stakeholders gained access to consultation.
The service also identified the need to review how they recorded the consultation
discussion so that they could use the data to measure outcomes from the consultation.
This will help them to improve their service in this core area of service delivery.
A good range of partners were engaged both in the gathering of self-evaluation data
and in focus groups. The involvement of EPs from other services was very effective in
providing SAEPS with possible solutions to issues arising from stakeholders. This was
particularly helpful because of the shared context. It also provided the potential to build
capacity and sustainable networks for future self-evaluation activities.
High quality professional dialogue was evident by the VSE teams during reflection time
and when engaged with focus groups. EPs acted as critical friends to themselves and
each other in a constructive and helpful way. Their openness to alternative
perspectives and interpretations of data helped them to gain more clarity about the key
areas which would enable them to continue to improve.
Partners involved in gathering self-evaluation data became increasingly challenging by
asking more probing questions as the week progressed. They were highly effective in
helping the EPS to reflect on their practice, providing new information to help them
move the agenda forward. For example, CLD colleagues suggested that in relation to
Nurture, advice and guidance on intervention strategies would be a helpful development
for future engagement in schools, children’s services, and with families.
4. What does the Educational Psychology Service plan to do next?
 The service has gathered very good impact data on operational processes such as
training and the delivery of consultation and advice. They are aware that they now need
to focus on outcome data more and to link outcomes to National priorities. For
example, how does consultation help to close the poverty related gap?
 The service has gathered a very good range of impact data from a range of sources
allowing them to triangulate their evidence. Some of their evaluative statements are
based on small numbers of data sources. They recognise that they are in a good
position to gather more evidence from a larger sample, thereby providing greater
reliability to their evaluative statements.
 The service is now aware that they should consider how to use existing sources of
data across the council to help them improve their outcome evidence base. They have
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very good examples of using data to demonstrate outcomes for nurture groups and
dyslexia friendly schools. The service is aware that these models could now be applied
to a greater range of their activities.
 EPs and partners recognised the need to ground more of the service’s outcomes to
meaningful teaching and learning contexts. For example, how do nurturing approaches
help to improve learner’s experiences, improve mental health and wellbeing, numeracy
and literacy Curriculum for Excellence outcomes.
5. What is South Ayrshire Council’s Educational Psychology Service’s capacity
for improvement?
Education Scotland validated SAEPS’s self-evaluation. The service provided a
thorough analysis of their strengths and areas for improvement which was based on
good evidence. Some of their self-evaluation deployed rigorous scientific analysis using
sound psychological theory and practice. The application of psychological theory and
evidence was very effective in helping others to improve their practice. The strong
leadership from the Principal Educational Psychologist, provides HM Inspectors and
associate assessors with confidence that the service is in a good position to continue to
build on their self-evaluation for continuous improvement.
Dr Laura-Ann Currie
HM Inspector
15 April 2016
Further information about the EPS VSE reports and self-evaluation can be found on the
service’s website www.eps.south-ayrshire.gov.uk
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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