Since we launched BST during the summer term of 2020 to aid school leadership and management, we have learnt a great deal. The bundle of self-evaluation materials we’ve developed is built on 5 key principles – namely ambition, purpose, underpinned, empowerment and ownership.
Ambition
Leaders are using the ‘we want to see …’ phrasing to help them clarify and articulate their ambition for their unique school. This phrasing encourages leaders and teaching staff to check out how well current work aligns with what they want to see. In turn, there is less description about provision and greater evaluation.
Purpose
Leaders are begin clearer about what they want their self-evaluation work to achieve. Often, this relates directly to working with governors. This enabling process supports governors in understanding school provision and also in holding leaders to account for school performance.
Underpinned
The learning from ofsted’s work in developing the Education Inspection Framework (EIF) is proving helpful. Leaders are using the EIF language to help them agree and share their school’s vision and aims.
Empowerment
The more we reflect on what schools are doing with BST, the more we realise that the whole leadership team can be empowered to drive improvement. This is about developing leadership capacity.
Ownership
Leaders are more confident and competent in talking about their knowledge of their own school. Often this development is centred on curriculum thinking.
At Schoolweave, we are continuing to refine the online audit process to further assist school leadership and management. Working with schools already engaged with BST, we are constantly evaluating what we can do next in order to best support schools.
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