At the evaluate and diagnose stage, schools should:
- assess their performance and progress against their current school strategic plan (SSP)
- evaluate existing school improvement strategies and efforts for their impact and effectiveness, bringing challenge partners on board to help identify and diagnose the cause of areas needing attention
- measure student learning growth by comparing where students progress over time.
The school sets out to diagnose its performance against its SSP considering the enablers and barriers.
School self-evaluation
School self-evaluation involves a school community identifying its progress, achievements and barriers to improvement. It provides schools with a process to collect data from diverse sources to inform action for improving student outcomes and professional learning, much the same as we use student data to identify a student's zone of proximal development.
School reflection and self-evaluation helps identify:
- what is working well
- what needs to continue
- which areas of the school's work may need to be improved or further developed.
It informs decisions relating to priority-setting, initiatives, strategies and actions for improvement.
School reviews
As part of the improvement cycle, each Victorian government school undertakes a review every four years. The school community completes a comprehensive self-evaluation against the FISO continua of pactice, which should involve students, teachers and community members.
An independent analysis is also completed of a school’s performance against their goals and targets in their school strategic plan. The review evaluates the school's strengths, areas for improvement and the impact of its improvement efforts.
At the end of the review, a new four-year school strategic plan is created and endorsed by the school community.
Learn more about the school review process on the Department's intranet
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Annual reporting
Annual reporting informs parents and carers and the wider school community about the school's performance outcomes and its efforts to progress improved student achievement. The report also outlines the effectiveness of resource allocation throughout the year, as well as future directions for improvement.
The annual report is a legislative and regulatory requirement under the
Education and Training Reform Act 2006 and the
National Education Agreement 2008.
Learn more about annual reporting on the Department's intranet
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Critical decision point: workforce planning
Continuous school improvement requires the disciplined use of good evidence within the improvement cycle to make sound judgments.
School leaders build this improvement culture by developing the capabilities of their leadership team.
For school leaders
Evaluate and diagnose the state of your school’s distributed and shared leadership:
- Identify and examine the current leadership profiles within your school.
- How is the current leadership structure meeting the needs of this school in addressing the defined barriers and improvement priorities?
- To what extent is there reliable evidence that your school’s current leadership structure is having the desired impact?
- Diagnose students’ learning needs using your school’s performance and other data.