School Evaluation Summary

Evaluation | Survey

This was an interesting task; I only wish I had had more time to do a more thorough job. Perhaps if this task had been assigned earlier on in the semester, I would have been able to do the job to the level I will need to justify improvements to my bosses! That being said, I now have some data that verifies what I have thought about "SCIS" in the past.

My school has been in the process of trying to achieve the NAACE Mark which is a British technology maturity certification. It is rather similar to the maturity benchmarks we used in this task. It has not been my responsibility to evaluate "SCIS" against the NAACE Mark criteria but I have been asked to give my opinion in the past. I was not as positive in my assessment one year ago as those that were performing the evaluation and I was clearly being seen to be looking at the evaluation with a "glass half empty" perspective. After completing this task, I am confident that my previous assessment was accurate and that "SCIS" has a lot of work to do.

It was interesting to see the differing perspectives offered by the members of staff I asked to collaborate with me on this task. The Systems Adminstrator, the Assistant Principal for Development, and the Head of IT curriculum all completed the survey I prepared. After bringing all of their responses together I was able to get a much wider picture of the state the school is at. After given the evaluation to these staff members they too were interested in the differences in perception.

The elements that I have identified that need attention: training, new technology use, and assessment, will likely need 2 to 3 years of planned development to get them up to Intelligent level. As I mention in my evaluation, a culture shift will need to occur where it comes to the attitudes of the staff. I regularly visit an American international school and play sport with the staff there. Through this interaction I have had the opportunity to talk with the Americans regarding their attitudes to training. It is clear that the requirement to go through re-certification is a big plus for institutes that have this in place. The staff know they have to meet the standards or they will not be able to teach; their jobs depend on them being up-to-date.

In the past I submitted the suggestion/plan to the leaders of "SCIS" that the school take a more serious view of the attendance at training and the development of the skills needed to work in a 1 to 1 environment. I made comparisons with other educational systems such as the US and Japan but it was decided to continue with training being "optional". The idea of making staff do certification seems completely unrealistic! Whilst "SCIS" employs staff on a 2 year contract basis, they are not prepared to use this pressure to insight change.

Before I return to school I intend to fully compare the benchmark with the NAACE Mark. Had I had the time to be more thorough for this task, I would have asked department and faculty heads to complete the survey along with a sample of students, parents and governors where the survey is appropriate. It was clear to me after I got the responses back from the three other staff members with responsibility for technology integration that perspectives are very different. We will need to thoroughly go through each element and evidence each part from the students perspectives right up to the governors if we intend to succeed with the NAACE Mark.