Throughout the world, school review processes against a quality framework are seen as a powerful reflective tool for leaders and teachers.
We know that the most successful leaders and teachers see themselves as reflective learners. Just like children and students, adults are most effective when they gauge their progress against a quality benchmark and use this to reflect upon their future strategies for progress. We have described such learning as part of our Confident + Agile + Reflective Learning (CARL) framework.
This also applies to schools, as communities of professional learners, drawing upon trusted external eyes (as well as self-review processes) to provide feedback against key areas of quality and offer advice as to how to progress further. Timperley (2008) and Sahlberg (2015) agree that being able to compare themselves against quality benchmarks is a powerful professional learning activity for leaders and teachers.
This is why Excellent Schools has developed its unique framework in seven key areas that reflect the quality of the whole school conditions that best enhance the effectiveness of teachers and leaders. These areas, or whole school improvement levers, range from professional culture, to improvement planning, to data informed decision making, to professional learning processes. School improvement teams can draw upon the wisdom of external and internal reviewers working within our framework to be able to gauge where there are areas for future growth and development.
Three foundational elements in any successful school review process relate to the openness to feedback, a commitment to transparency, and the development of trusting relationships. In the first case, leaders modelling resilience and embracing feedback helps support a culture where all feel comfortable to do so. Also, when there is a sense of transparency about the purposes of the review and the use of the results, this raises levels of ownership for all. Lastly, all school review processes have to engender trust across the range of participants.
These elements are built into the school review process that Excellent Schools has developed. Our team works in collaboration with leaders and their communities throughout every step of the process to create that trusting environment with a focus on feedback that can help the school attain its goals.
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