Three “low-stakes” approaches to school review.

The best school review processes reinforce professional learning and don’t have to be “high stakes” affairs!

In a previous article, I have talked about the importance of school review processes within the Excellent Schools Quality Framework for reflective professional learning about the conditions most conducive to high quality teaching and learning.

While it is great to remember that we are all learners and need to be ambitious with our improvement goals, the response to such a position is often that the potential for reflective learning is dulled by the apprehension associated with feeling judged by observers or viewed as somehow deficient.

Acknowledging this, Excellent Schools have developed three approaches to school review that are flexible to the needs of the school and reinforce the positive impact of learning within an environment of trust and understanding. All of these are designed to be “low-stakes” with an emphasis on dialogic professional learning and removing the element of judgement.

Our first approach is to facilitate school-self review processes whereby a team within the school work closely with staff to use our Quality Framework and establish key points of focus with beneficial ends. Our advice in such situations is to start small and have a representative group who can steer the process in agreed ways. One important part of the process is for staff to consider the evidence and endorse some recommended ways forward. The role of the ES Advisor is to work alongside the team to get a constructive outcome that can be owned by all.

The second approach is to establish a team of colleague principals (and others if appropriate) who know the school well and appreciate the challenges facing all schools in a contemporary world. Reflective Elmore’s work on Instructional Rounds, all of the principals consult with their teams and arrive at a shared focus within the Quality Framework that will be mutually beneficial. Again, the teams can start small and build on, once they are familiar with the process and confident in how it unfolds. The benefit of this approach is that all three principals visit each other’s schools and can draw upon different experiences as a basis for comparison and shared recommendations. The role of the ES Advisor is to facilitate the group deliberations, clarify aspects of the framework and help with the workload of timelines, documenting and reporting.

Our third approach uses the familiar method of an external school review but it is carried out as an appreciative process and the role of the ES Advisor is very much cast in an affirming way. Again, the school establishes a team to influence the process and the recommendations are provided in a confidential manner with the team having input into the final wording of the report as required.

In all three cases, the philosophy of Excellent Schools underpins the approach of our Advisors who are deeply supportive of schools and practice discretion while also ensuring that the process is beneficial and teams can find practical and rigorous ways forward in the interests of their students.