Ofsted 2014 - Linking the SEF SIP and PM to empower school improvement

Ofsted 2014 - Linking the SEF SIP and PM to empower school improvement

Compiling the Self-Evaluation Report for Ofsted can ensure sustainable improvement across the school if school leaders combine the SEF the SIP and PM.  This is made so much easier when using The iAbacus - which is designed to make things simpler.

Where we are now...

As Autumn term 2014 starts, school leaders and classroom teachers are leafing through another updated Ofsted Framework  here  Heads and Principals are introducing Performance Management and some are wrestling with the New Curriculum.  One head tells me, he’s preparing for Ofsted scrutiny of each three expectations, “By getting my revenge in first and updating both my Self-Evaluation Form (SEF) and School Improvement Plan (SIP)!”

That word “both” worries me.  Why is he keeping these two critical processes separate? And, why keep the third, Performance Management (PM) out of it?  This is all too complicated.  I want to help him keep it simple because we now know that sustainable improvement can only be achieved when all three processes are brought together in one common system.  One system for everyone in the school to: “Look at what they do, with a view to doing it better”.  I try to explain that SEF+SIP+ PM = Sustainable School Improvement  but I see he’s in a state of learned helplessness and it’s only day two of term - so I say no more.

How did we get here?

The  first Ofsted framework, in the early 1990s  relied almost exclusively on inspector judgement.  That reliance on the primacy of others’ judgement is hard to unlearn.  OK,  later frameworks introduced Self Evaluation and greater reliance on in-school, self evaluation was slow but sure until we had the SEF.  “The importance of teaching” – the schools' White Paper 2010 extended the trend with a clear expectation that schools will be in control of their own development and set their improvement.  The Framework for School Inspection 2011 stated,

“Increasing the school’s confidence: by endorsing its own view of its effectiveness when that is accurate, and offering a sharp challenge and the impetus to act where improvement is needed..... The quality of self-evaluation is a good indicator of the calibre of the school’s leaders and managers and of the school’s capacity to improve.”

That was joy to school improvers, like me.  I had pointed up the learned helplessness in training of Ofsted Inspectors and NCTL Facilitators in “The Giant Awakes – the third age of evaluation” in Improvement Magazine Summer 2009.  I wanted to expose the professional hypocrisy of believing students learn best through peer assessment, or assessment for learning whilst believing that teachers and leaders don’t.

Support from theory and research

We were beginning to know that when students, teachers and leaders can say, “Looking at what we do with a view to doing it better next time, is part of our job - and most of us do it most of the time” there is a sustainable model in place.  Researchers had shown this to be true but the force of John Hattie’s final conclusion from his meta-analyses of achievement is perhaps most powerful.  In, “Visible Learning” 2009he references symmetry in the learning process for students and teachers,

 “School leaders and teachers need to create school, staffroom and classroom environments where error is welcomed as a learning opportunity, where discarding incorrect knowledge and understanding is welcomed and where participants can feel safe to learn re-learn, and explore knowledge and understanding”

Many have written about simplifying complex processes by stepping back to see the overall pattern of things.  Peter Senge in ‘The Fifth Discipline’ (1990) described Systems Thinking when a holistic view is useful because it enables the simplicity of detail to be understood as part of the whole, rather than separate parts.  Writing about medicine and surgery, Atul Gawande in ‘The Checklist Manifesto’ (2010) made an observation that strikes at the heart of this,

“We have accumulated stupendous know-how… and highly trained highly skilled and hardworking people… nonetheless avoidable failures are common and persistent, not to mention demoralising and frustrating…. the reason is increasingly evident: the volume and complexity of what we know and the systems we use have designed, exceed our ability to deliver the benefits... we need a different strategy for overcoming failure, one that builds on experience but also makes up for our inevitable human inadequacies. And there is such a strategy – though it seems almost ridiculous in its simplicity, maybe even crazy, to those of us who have spent years carefully developing ever more advanced skills and technologies.  It is a checklist!”

How do we get there?

So, if it is established wisdom that developing the capacity to self-evaluate and plan for improvement is a requirement, how do we empower it? 

I was one of those first Ofsted Inspectors to be trained in the early 1990s and after one inspection I became an evangelical school improver.  Like others, I preferred helping schools work on their key issues.  After a decade of school improvement in some very challenging schools we began to see a pattern in the schools that did improve.  I became sure that the capacity to self improve can be judged by asking three key questions of students, teachers and leaders, indeed anyone undertaking any endeavour.  The language varied but the essence was:

1.       JUDGEMENT - How well are we doing?

·         How do we know - are we using objective criteria?

·         What's our evidence?

2.       ANALYSIS - What is helping and hindering progress?

·         Which of these are in our control?

·         What are our priorities for action?

3.       ACTION - So, what are we planning to do next?

·         Who can help?  When will it be done?

·         How will we judge success?

Confident answers to the questions, in this hierarchy, require an understanding of a cyclical processes like:  PLAN-DO-REVIEW   The questions link EVALUATION with PLANNING and deal with PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT along the way by ensuring: judgement is matched to criteria – analysis is linked to planning and – evaluation of impact leads back to new judgement.  This was becoming that check-list

Then, I took an ABACUS, perhaps the oldest gadget in the world, as a visual simplification of the complex concepts whereby staff and, at best, students understood they had the capacity to self-improve.   Sliding a bead from left to right, across a competency grid, proved to be amazingly powerful.  Combining this with the computer, one of the newest gadgets, was achieved in 2012. We called it The iABACUS and now describe it as a unique school improvement tool – self evaluation and action planning  for everyone.  The key questions, above, are built in and it is linked to solid theory see www.iabacus.co.uk/model 

It is no irony that The iAbacus has a range of competency grids built in including because we wanted it to be  a check against agreed criteria.  So, it comes pre-populated with The latest September 2014 Ofsted Framework,  all the National Curriculum subject criteria and Headteacher and Teacher Standards.  They are all there, all those supposedly separate pieces of work  SEF+SIP+PM unified in one process - and users check their way through it.  

Our users tell us again and again - it's deceptively simple. My evangelism about school improvement has never been stronger.  I promise you'll like t, if you take time to try it..  if you don't believe me look at the testimonials and articles under MORE INFORMATION on the top bar here

Finally

So, I emailed and offered a licence to the head I spoke to at the start of this BLOG – he’s yet to come back to me.  Indeed, we’ve emailed all secondary heads in England this week - primaries will be contacted later.  I wonder if they’ll have time to read it. 

If you want a free trial, or licence click here or email me directly john@iabacus.co.uk 

To see a short video of it working click here