Validated self-evaluation
Glasgow City Council
12 June 2012
Contents
Page
1.
The aims, nature and scope of validated self-evaluation
1
2.
Validated self-evaluation in Glasgow City Council
1
3.
Education Scotland’s assessment of the quality of
self-evaluation in Glasgow City Council
2
4.
What strengths has the validated self-evaluation identified?
4
5.
What is the Council’s capacity for improvement?
4
6.
What does the Council plan to do next?
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Appendix: Link to Glasgow City Council self-evaluation
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1.
The aims, nature and scope of validated self-evaluation
2.
Validated self-evaluation in Glasgow City Council
HM Inspectors from Education Scotland joined Glasgow City Council Education
Services (GCCES) to work with them on a validated self-evaluation (VSE) as part of
the Council’s drive for continuous improvement. Education Services wanted to use
the VSE process to take a closer look at how well children, young people and
families were achieving within the context of Getting it Right for Every Child
(GIRFEC). The themes chosen were taken from the GIRFEC wellbeing indicators
and were focused on:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Healthy and Active
Nurtured
Included
Achieving
Senior managers from GCCES, the Lead Facilitator and the District Inspector
discussed and agreed the focus of the themes. They also considered the
membership for each theme group carefully. As a result, they agreed that including
a wider range of partners would ensure a more holistic approach to the
self-evaluation process and outcomes. Senior managers were of the view that the
VSE would provide a useful professional development opportunity for GCCES staff
and their partners. They had also planned that they would use the outcomes from
the VSE activities to contribute towards Education Services’ improvement priorities.
Four task groups were established to evaluate how well GCCES were performing
under each of the chosen wellbeing indicators. Each group was chaired by a
headteacher, and representation was chosen from across the early years, primary
and secondary sectors. Other team members included quality improvement officers,
area education officers, partners from Glasgow Life (an arms length organisation),
health improvement officers and social work. Each group was tasked with looking at
the quality of self-evaluation evidence and to identify current strengths and areas for
further improvement. GCCES placed a strong emphasis on evaluating the
effectiveness of current practice in each of the themes. For example, groups were
asked to evaluate how effectively establishments ensured that children and young
people were healthy and active, included, nurtured and achieving. They were also
asked to evaluate the consistency of practice across Glasgow in relation to the
chosen wellbeing indicators. Most importantly, the groups were charged with
evaluating the impact of current practice on the wellbeing and learning of children
and young people.
At the end of the first stage, each group provided evaluative statements which
identified a need to:
•
make better use of the evidence across all four themes to benefit from the
synergies identified across the wellbeing indicators;
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•
reflect further on how to improve the impact of partners on achieving positive
outcomes for children and young people. All groups recognised the benefit of
having partner agencies in their groups and were more aware of how they
contributed to outcomes for children and young people. Team members were
also made more aware of the range of self-evaluation data which partners could
contribute towards their evaluations. The advantages of greater partnership
working and stronger collaboration were a key cross-cutting theme identified by
the groups that required further investigation; and
•
sample a wider range of schools and stakeholders to ensure a sharper focus and
to determine the extent to which key strengths were consistent across Glasgow.
This was a particularly strong aspect in the Healthy and Active themed group.
Following the first stage of the VSE, HM Inspectors confirmed that GCCES had
robust and effective self-evaluation processes and procedures which were leading to
improvements. Following further discussion between HM Inspectors and GCCES,
further work was identified that would build on the work undertaken by the themed
groups, to refine the strengths and areas for improvement. It was agreed that
HM Inspectors would continue to engage with GCCES to provide support and further
build capacity. Using the evaluative statements developed by each group, together
with the cross cutting themes which emerged from the first stage, three areas were
identified as being worthy of further investigation in the second stage.
1. How effectively are we working with partners in developing the Healthy and
Active agenda?
2. How inclusive are our secondary schools and how well do they build the
resilience of young people?
3. How effective are quality assurance processes and systems both locally and
at authority level in relation to attainment and achievement?
In the second stage of the VSE, three smaller groups were created from some of the
team members who had participated in the first stage. The groups used the
evidence from the first week of the VSE and interrogated and analysed this further.
They also organised more visits to establishments and focus groups of key partners
in order to reach robust evaluations of the high level strengths and areas for
improvement.
3.
Education Scotland’s assessment of the quality of self-evaluation in
Glasgow City Council
Throughout the VSE, Education Services demonstrated that their self-evaluation had
evolved and developed into a strong evidence based process with sound analysis
and interpretation of data which led to improvements for children and young people.
Team members involved in the VSE built on GCCES’s self-evaluation evidence and
further interrogated new and existing data to reach high level conclusions for
incorporation into GCCES’s improvement priorities. The groups were well led by the
Chairs and tasks were clearly focused on outcomes for children and young people,
and impact. All team members were highly motivated, and comfortable in
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challenging each other to ensure that interpretations of evidence were robust,
triangulated and well sourced. All groups continually reflected on the process of
gathering evidence and made improvements as a result. For example, the range
and scope of activities was extended by the Achieving group to include community
and voluntary groups. Key questions used for interviews were improved as the week
progressed to focus on the evidence required to support evaluative judgements. A
good range of self-evaluation activities were undertaken including interviews with key
stakeholders, senior officers of the Council, Education Services, NHS, headteachers,
children and young people and partner agencies. The process of evaluating key
strengths, areas for improvement and areas for further exploration was effective and
accurately recorded, allowing almost all groups to formulate a robust summary at the
end of the week. The schools visited as part of the VSE were able to evidence their
answers to questions with good quality information and data. The authority had also
provided high level self-evaluation data, particularly in relation to Attainment and
Achievement, Healthy and Active and Nurture in the primary sector. A growing body
of quantitative and qualitative data was developing in relation to the evaluation of
how successfully children and young people were being included in Glasgow schools
and centres. Much of the self-evaluation evidence for each theme needed to be
extended beyond schools to include partners’ contribution to the process of
self-evaluation and to the outcomes for children and young people. It was evident
during the gathering of self-evaluation data that the authority used the information
effectively and as a result had improved key outcomes for children and young
people. For example, the detailed analysis of young people’s attainment in S4-6
identified clear areas for improvement at establishment and City-wide level, and
resulted in increases in attainment.
During the initial process of collating evidence, HM Inspectors coached and directed
team members to ensure that they were sufficiently outcome focused and able to
use the self-evaluation data to identify high level messages. By the second stage
teams were more able to work across groups and combine evidence, which helped
to provide more confidence in the groups’ evaluations of strengths and areas for
development. In particular team members were able to take a more strategic
approach and as a result their summary statements were less operational. It was
noted that the coaching and mentoring by HM Inspectors improved team members’
questioning, analysis and interrogation of data and evidence. As the week
progressed the groups became increasingly clear and confident in reaching
conclusions throughout the VSE process.
It was clear at the end of the first week that GCCES had a robust and effective
approach to self-evaluation. However, given the size of the authority, all groups felt
that they needed more evidence and a sharper focus to ensure that their conclusions
could be consistently applied across all schools and establishments, and supported
by all stakeholders. The second week allowed team members to undertake this
work and provided Education Scotland with further confidence in the validity of the
VSE conclusions and that GCCES approach to self-evaluation was robust.
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4.
What strengths has the validated self-evaluation identified?
The following strengths were identified through the VSE. This included the work of
the themed groups at the first stage and the further analysis and synthesis
undertaken at the second stage, together with information provided by GCCES’s
on-going self-evaluation.
•
Strong and powerful leadership of the Executive Director.
•
Clear corporate vision shared by the directorate team, education officers, quality
improvement staff and heads of establishments, which is having a positive
impact on outcomes for children and young people.
•
Education Services’ commitment to the development of self-evaluation for
improvement and the highly effective analysis and interpretation of evidence to
help plan and improve outcomes for children and young people, underpinned by
high-quality policies and guidance.
•
Highly effective self-evaluation approaches to tracking and monitoring secondary
school attainment and taking action in response, leading to improvements in the
performance of all children and young people.
•
An improving inclusive approach in schools and establishments to meeting the
learning needs of all children.
5.
What is the Council’s capacity for improvement?
Education Services have shown that they have a strong capacity for continuous
improvement, supported by robust self-evaluation systems and processes leading to
greater rigour in planning for improvement. Evidence of the effectiveness of their
self-evaluation is seen in important improvements in a number of key areas such as
a notable reduction in exclusions, increased attendance, improvements in
attainment, positive post-school destinations, and more positive evaluations in
HM Inspectors inspection reports. Recent restructuring into three geographical
areas with one senior manager responsible for an area and cross cutting themes has
provided greater clarity and focus for quality improvement, leading to more corporate
approaches to raising attainment and achieving improvements through
self-evaluation. The use of the GIRFEC wellbeing indicators as a framework for
validating the Education Service’s self-evaluation was a helpful development
allowing them to look beyond the impact of schools on outcomes for children and
young people, to include partners such as Glasgow Life, health, social work and the
voluntary sector. The VSE methodology will be used to further develop these
partnerships and build on the strengths identified by the themed groups.
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6.
What does the Council plan to do next?
HM Inspectors, and GCCES agreed the following areas for further improvement.
These were to:
•
continue to build on the engagement with partners to enhance self-evaluation and
work collaboratively to improve outcomes for children, young people and their
families;
•
more effectively track young people’s progress and achievement particularly
within the broad general education and within and beyond school;
•
with partners, continue to develop inclusive approaches to meeting the needs of
all learners; and
•
continue to develop joint planning and evaluation of learners’ progress with
partners in health and wellbeing and jointly rationalise the number of policies
about practice.
Further details of areas identified for improvement are given in the report prepared
by Glasgow City Council as part of the VSE process.
Dr Laura-Ann Currie
HM Inspector
Education Scotland
12 June 2012
How can you contact us?
Should you wish to comment on any aspect of validated self-evaluation you
should write to Dr Gill Robinson, HM Chief Inspector, at Education Scotland,
Denholm House, Almondvale Business Park, Almondvale Way, Livingston, EH54
6GA. Alternatively, if your query is related to this report, you may also write to
Mr George Black, Chief Executive, Glasgow City Council, City Chambers,
Glasgow, G2 1DU.
Appendix: Glasgow City Council self-evaluation
http://www.glasgow.gov.uk/en/YourCouncil/Performance/ServiceDepartments/Education
http://www.glasgow.gov.uk/en/Residents/GoingtoSchool/generalinfo.htm
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