SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT AND
SELF-EVALUATION IN THE NEW
OFSTED FRAMEWORK – WHAT
DOES IT MEAN FOR GOVERNORS?
Wendy Sheehan
GL Performance
May 2012
Ofsted Annual Report, 2010/11
“Most commonly, the governing body knew too
little about the school because monitoring was not
rigorous or because over-generous self review
judgements were accepted without sufficient
challenge: at times of change and in an inherently
challenging sector, they accepted too much on
trust.”
Ofsted Key Issues
School 1:
Increase the role of the governing body in school improvement by:
• involving governors more closely in monitoring the work of the
school
• ensuring their involvement in detailed planning that clearly
identifies priorities for the school's long-term strategic development
School 2:
Increase the effectiveness of leadership and management by:
ensuring that the governing body receives additional training and
support so that it can robustly hold the school to account
New Ofsted Inspection Framework 2012
• “Self-evaluation is now well established in schools, providing
the basis for planning for development and improvement.
Inspection takes account of and contributes to a school’s selfevaluation.”
• “The quality of its self-evaluation is a good indicator of the
calibre of the school’s leaders and managers and of the
school’s capability to improve.”
• When schools are first informed that they are to be inspected,
they will be asked to “provide Ofsted with a summary of their
self-evaluation. This should include evidence from school
stakeholders”.
New Ofsted Framework
Leadership and Management Grade Descriptor –
Outstanding
“All leaders and managers, including the governing
body, are highly ambitious for the school and lead by
example. They base their actions on a deep and
accurate understanding of the school’s performance
and of staff and pupils’ skills and attributes”.
New Ofsted Framework
Leadership and Management Grade Descriptor –
Satisfactory (from Sept 2012 requires improvement)
“The headteacher and most other key leaders,
including the governing body, provide a concerted
approach to school improvement”.
The school self-evaluation cycle
Gather evidence
Make judgements about strengths
and areas for improvements
Implement and monitor
improvement plan
Devise school improvement plan
Write self-evaluation report
The Process
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
How well are we doing?
How do we as Governors know?
What evidence do we have?
How can we find out more?
What are your schools’ strengths?
What are the schools’ areas for
improvement?
7. How do we monitor?
1. How well are we doing?
•How are you going to self evaluate?
•What questions are you going to ask?
•What are you going to measure yourself against?
•Ofsted Framework / ASCL Framework / Your own?
•What questions are the ones which will help you
move forward?
•Do you need to add more?
Ofsted Framework
Quality of education provided in the school, its overall
effectiveness, taking account of the four key judgements.
The four judgements cover:
•the achievement of pupils at the school
•the quality of teaching in the school
•the behaviour and safety of pupils at the school
•the quality of leadership and management of the
school.
Ofsted Framework
Quality of education provided in the school, its overall
effectiveness, taking account of the four key judgements
and:
how well the school is promoting the pupils’ spiritual,
moral, social and cultural development
the extent to which the education provided by the school
meets the needs of all pupils, including those with special
educational needs and/or disabilities.
A Good education for all –
consultation paper for Sept 2012 changes
•To require “outstanding” schools to have “outstanding”
teacher
•Only “good” and “outstanding” schools will be deemed
providing an acceptable standard of education
•“Requires improvement” will replace “satisfactory” and
“notice to improve”
•“Requires improvement” schools will be subject to reinspection earlier than currently
A Good education for all –
consultation paper for Sept 2012 changes
•Schools judged “requires improvement” on two
consecutive inspections will be deemed as “special
measures”
•Inspections will be undertaken without notice
•Inspectors will analyse anonymised information of the
recent performance management outcomes as part of the
Leadership and management judgement.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
How well are we doing?
How do we as Governors know?
What evidence do we have?
How can we find out more?
What are your schools’ strengths?
What are the schools’ areas for
improvement?
7. How do we monitor?
How do we as Governors know?
•Results
•Last Ofsted
•Headteachers report
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
How well are we doing?
How do we as Governors know?
What evidence do we have?
How can we find out more?
What are your schools’ strengths?
What are the schools’ areas for
improvement?
7. How do we monitor?
Your turn:
Your Headteacher says you are
OUTSTANDING in all 4 areas
What evidence would you look for to
support this?
1.
The achievement of pupils at the school
2.
The quality of teaching in the school
3.
The behaviour and safety of pupils at the school
4.
The quality of leadership and management of the school
5 minutes…..
What did you come up with?
RAISE online
Academic Results internal / external
Attendance data, late books, exclusions
Internal testing
Entry to school tests
School plan and policies, subject department plans,
teachers’ plans,
The code of behaviour
School inspection reports, previous school self-evaluation
reports, school improvement plans, progress reports,
agendas and minutes of meetings
Audits - for example, health and safety, finance
What did you come up with?
• Interviews with students, staff, parents.
• Walking round the school at different times of the day.
• Displays
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
How well are we doing?
How do we as Governors know?
What evidence do we have?
How can we find out more?
What are your schools’ strengths?
What are the schools’ areas for
improvement?
7. How do we monitor?
New Ofsted Inspection Framework
• “Inspections will give greater consideration to the
views of parents, pupils and staff as important
evidence.”
• Ofsted will draw on pupils’ and parents’ views to inform
inspection judgements and they will strive to inform
inspection activities by gathering the views of pupils and
parents who have a significant interest in the school.
Parent Power
• The Government is transforming the relationship schools
have with parents.
• The thoughts and views of parents have never been more
important in shaping the way schools are run.
• The SEN Green Paper emphasised the need for more
parental choice in where and how their children are
educated.
• The Bew Review for KS2 assessment called for a wider
range of data to be made available to parents.
• The results of the new mandatory phonics screener at
the end of Year 1 will be shared with parents.
• As part of the new Ofsted framework, parents have been
given the power to trigger a school inspection.
ParentView
• Ofsted launched the ParentView website in October 2011:
http://parentview.ofsted.gov.uk/
• The website enables parents to share their views on their
child’s school and it covers a range of topics, including
quality of teaching, bullying, behaviour and levels of
homework.
• The responses to the 12 closed questions that make up the
questionnaire will help Ofsted decide which schools to
inspect, and when.
Schools say…..
“Evaluating parental opinions is not easy”
“Response rates are usually poor and I have to
question the quality of our data”
“Recording and analysing the data can take
days – normally during the school holidays”
“What do my results really mean?”
An effective parental survey
Start with the end in mind
• What evidence do you need for your self evaluation?
• What evidence do you need to challenge assumptions from
ParentView?
• What changes are you planning to implement?
– Are they the right ones?
•What changes have you implemented?
– Were they successful?
.
An effective Parental survey
• Importance v satisfaction
• Qualitative v quantitative
• Reliability
• Feedback
• Focus groups
• Repeat annually
.
Improving response rates
• Advertise
• Paper v’s Online
• Pupil power
• Get teachers on board
• Incentivise
• Get the timing right
• Feedback
• Take action
Analysis
• Allow time and resource to enter the data
• Use the expertise at your disposal
• Understand and have confidence in your
data
•1 to 5 scale – standard error of the mean
•Read the qualitative results!
–
Results
Be aware of parental bias
Kirkland Rowell Surveys 2011
An effective Parental survey
Importance verses satisfaction
Identify any disconnect
Results
• Gender Analysis
• Year Group Analysis
• Historical data
The customer is always right?
Don’t be alarmed by the results – you are
measuring perception
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
How well are we doing?
How do we as Governors know?
What evidence do we have?
How can we find out more?
What are your schools’ strengths?
What are the schools’ areas for
improvement?
7. How do we monitor?
What are your schools’ strengths?
•
List 5 of your school’s strengths
•
Avoid – “it’s a lovely school every one is so nice
syndrome” be specific
•
Do you have the evidence to prove each of those
strengths?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
How well are we doing?
How do we as Governors know?
What evidence do we have?
How can we find out more?
What are your schools’ strengths?
What are the schools’ areas for
improvement?
7. How do we monitor?
School Improvement Actions
•What are they at your school?
•How often are they set?
•Who decided what they should be?
•If you agreed, why?
National pressures on schools?
Press this week: Sir Michael Wilshaw,Chief Inspector Ofsted
•Almost a third of pupils who reached the national targets at the
age of 11 failed to gain good GCSEs in the subject at 16
•Giving parents regular updates on their children’s reading age,
showing whether they are reaching the basic standard expected for
their peer group
Narrow the gap!
In the new inspection:
“There is greater focus on attainment of different groups as part of
the understanding how well the school is helping to “narrow the
gap” between the attainment of groups underperforming nationally
and the attainment of all pupils”.
Are different groups of students at your school doing as well as
nationally or are their any groups falling behind?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
How well are we doing?
How do we as Governors know?
What evidence do we have?
How can we find out more?
What are your schools’ strengths?
What are the schools’ areas for
improvement?
7. How do we monitor?
The school self-evaluation cycle
Gather evidence
Make judgements about strengths
and areas for improvements
Implement and monitor
improvement plan
Write self-evaluation report
Devise school improvement plan
School Development / Improvement
Plan
If Ofsted walked in tomorrow……
could you say where you are up to on each action in the
plan
•which are completed …in progress…and or…
overdue……
•and why?
New Ofsted Framework
Leadership and Management Grade Descriptor –
Outstanding
All leaders and managers, including the governing
body, are highly ambitious for the school and lead by
example. They base their actions on a deep and
accurate understanding of the school’s performance
and of staff and pupils’ skills and attributes.
New Ofsted Framework
Leadership and Management Grade Descriptor –
Satisfactory (from Sept 2012 requires improvement)
The headteacher and most other key leaders,
including the governing body, provide a concerted
approach to school improvement.
Which one are you?????
What key questions could you ask at
your next Governors meeting?
Remember
“Most commonly, the governing body knew too little about
the school because monitoring was not rigorous or because
over-generous self review judgements were accepted
without sufficient challenge: at times of change and in an
inherently challenging sector, they accepted too much on
trust.”
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
To summarise:
How well are we doing?
How do we as Governors know?
What evidence do we have?
How can we find out more?
What are your schools’ strengths?
What are the schools’ areas for
improvement?
How do we monitor?
Thank you
Wendy Sheehan
E: wendy.sheehan@gl-performance.co.uk
T: 01400 250168
www:gl-performance.co.uk