Administrator's Corner
actions and behaviour to support the
school’s self-evaluation.
Individuals and teams can set targets
and measure their own performance
in relation to the expectations of their
role.
The school can build resilience
into its self-evaluation process by
encouraging people to work together,
communicate
clear
expectations
and navigate the challenges through
professional collaboration.
Boundaries
People need boundaries to be
explicitly defined so that they can
see how their role contributes to the
overall outcome and how they will be
held to account for their performance.
Without clear boundaries, some
people
may
overstep
their
responsibilities causing repetition and
unnecessary effort, while others may
step back from their tasks or not live
up to expectations leading to gaps in
the self-evaluation process.
The principal
Each principal will have their preferred
approach to self-evaluation, just as
they do to other aspects of leadership
in the school, but it is important to
consider how your own individual
style might be perceived by your
colleagues and other members of the
school community. Some principals
may prefer a hands-on approach
where they are actively involved in all
self-evaluation activities, while others
may rely more heavily on delegation
through senior and middle leaders.
Regardless of your personal style,
engaging your people in successful
self-evaluation is one of the most
important parts of your job as a school
leader.
Senior and middle leaders
The importance of senior and middle
leaders cannot be emphasised enough
... they are the agents of effective self-
evaluation in any school. They must
be able to speak the language of self-
evaluation with authenticity, credibility
and confidence. Senior leaders need
to engage middle leaders in regular
systematic discussions to quality
assure their work. Maintaining a
focus on self-evaluation at these
times allows deeper conversations to
unpack meaning and explore what lies
beneath what the school’s leaders are
seeing and hearing.
Senior leaders should be able to
see the big picture and understand
how the evaluation of work in their
respective year or phase contributes
to the school’s overall evaluation of its
performance.
Middle leaders should be the
powerhouse of knowledge about
their respective areas of responsibility
and be able to confidently articulate
the current position drawn from the
different sources of evidence available.
In schools where self-evaluation is
highly effective, the middle leaders
often display a number of traits and
characteristics that give them an
edge over their counterparts in other
schools.
• They understand the strategic
purpose of self-evaluation in their
school and implement the right
activities – at the right time – for the
right reasons.
• They analyse and interpret data with
a forensic approach to be able to
confidently articulate their findings
and make relevant decisions for
improvement.
themselves or their colleagues. This
leads to an unhealthy situation where
self-evaluation can become unstuck.
It is therefore essential that all
stakeholders in the school engage
in regular planned dialogue using
the school’s agreed language of self-
evaluation. It is only through having
these conversations that they will
develop greater confidence and
credibility to articulate their messages
and have a shared understanding of
the school’s performance.
Put simply, the school’s middle leaders
are the glue that holds self-evaluation
together.
They should be the superheroes
to provide stability and structure
that allow meaningful activities and
conversations to take place at all levels,
while senior leaders create a conduit
for evidence to flow through the
school and for appropriate leadership
decisions and actions to be taken.
• They have a clear schedule and
structure to their activities that
provide meaningful evaluation in the
form of evidence-based portfolios
and illustrative examples.
• They integrate and embed self-
evaluation activities into their
professional practice and constantly
check the pulse and monitor the vital
signs in their area of responsibility.
• They speak the language of self-
evaluation and reinforce this
through regular dialogue with their
staff colleagues, senior leaders and
all school stakeholders.
In schools where self-evaluation is
viewed as a ‘bolt-on’ activity or an
event prior to an external assessment
or inspection, the contribution
and impact of middle leaders is
often reduced dramatically. This
typically shows through insecurity
and vulnerability on the occasions
when they are held to account for
their work and performance, which is
worrying because it implies that they
are not having the right conversations
regularly enough through their day-
to-day work in the school. If middle
leaders are not being asked the right
questions by their line managers
and senior leaders, they in turn will
not be asking the right questions of
Here are three questions to start some
reflection and prompt discussion in
your school:
(1) What are the roles of different
stakeholder groups in relation to self-
evaluation in your school?
(2) For each stakeholder group:
• How
clearly
have
their
responsibilities been defined in
relation to self-evaluation?
• How well have their expectations
been articulated in relation to self-
evaluation?
• How clear are their boundaries in
relation to self-evaluation?
(3) How do your middle leaders
measure up as superheroes?
Class Time
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Nov - Dec 2018
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