I am delighted to commend to you this revised edition of How good is our school?. It replaces all previous versions. Along with a revised edition of Child at the Centre, this document forms the third part of How good is our school? The Journey to Excellence. The set of quality indicators continue to provide the core tool for self-evaluation for all schools, but they are now complemented by the very useful materials in other parts of The Journey to Excellence series.
The indicators within How good is our school? reflect the developing context within which schools now operate. They focus specifically on the impact of schools in improving the educational experience and lives of Scottish pupils through learning and their successes and achievements, particularly the broad outcomes for learners within A Curriculum for Excellence1 and the vision statement for Scotland’s children2.
This emphasis on impact and outcomes reinforces the principle that self-evaluation is not an end in itself. It is worthwhile only if it leads to improvements in the educational experiences and outcomes for children and young people, and to the maintenance of the highest standards where these already exist. How good is our school? is about achieving just that. It builds on good practice in schools and classrooms across Scotland and internationally, and is designed to help staff to evaluate their current performance and to identify priorities for action.
Increasingly, schools are improving the quality of learning through actions which are imaginative and innovative. The Journey to Excellence provides sets of tools which can be used to bring about continuous improvement in learning. Creativity, problem solving, innovation and learning from others’ experiences are features of such change. Journeys to Excellence, the digital resource which forms Part 5 of this series, will provide you with the stories of those who have made significant progress in their own journeys towards excellence.
Schools and pre-school centres are now part of a wider partnership of professionals, all of whom deliver a range of services to children. This edition of How good is our school?, therefore, has evolved by adopting a framework for self-evaluation common to all public services and structured around six questions which are important for any service to answer.
This edition also emphasises a collegiate culture in which staff engage in professional discussion and reflection based on a shared understanding of quality and a shared vision of their aims for young people. All staff should therefore be involved in the self-evaluation process. Individual teachers and groups of teachers evaluating their work together, teachers reflecting on the work of their peers and on how well the school is led and managed are as necessary ingredients of self-evaluation as the observations of lessons and learning experiences by promoted staff. Self-evaluation becomes a reflective professional process which helps schools get to know themselves well, identify their agenda for improvement and promote well-considered innovation.
The quality indicators are a guide in that process and not a set of recipes for success. They must sit alongside professional expertise and other sources of guidance, for example on the curriculum, on learning, on the craft of teaching and on the leadership of change, to contribute to a common search for quality and the factors involved in achieving it in any class or school.
Since the first publication of How good is our school?, self-evaluation has become increasingly embedded across Scottish education and has contributed well to improving performance and raising attainment and achievement for all learners. I commented in Improving Scottish Education3 on the great strides taken by educational establishments in becoming aware of their own strengths and weaknesses, placing Scotland at the forefront of quality improvement internationally. I commend this third edition of How good is our school? to you in taking forward our collective commitment to continuous improvement and excellence.
Graham Donaldson
HM Senior Chief Inspector