The Department of Education and Skills requires each school to engage in the practice of self reflection or a School Self Evaluation (SSE) process. School self-evaluation is a collaborative, inclusive, and reflective process of internal school review. An evidence-based approach, it involves gathering information from a range of sources, and then making judgements and action plans based on the evidence gathered.
A quality framework titled Looking at Our School 2016 A Quality Framework for Post-Primary Schools provides a unified and coherent set of standards for two dimensions of the work of schools: teaching and learning and leadership and management. The teaching and learning dimension of the Quality Framework supports schools as they engage in the school self-evaluation process.
Schools are required to devise a School Improvement Plan (SIP) that contains a summary of the areas for improvement identified as part of the SSE process. The SSE report and SIP sets out clearly what needs to be done to further improve the work of the school. The language used should be clear, specific and accessible. The first section is the report and the second section is the improvement plan.
The Board of Management is responsible for ensuring that a brief summary of SSE and the SIP are provided to the whole school community.
The SIP should identify
- targets for improvement (with a focus on learner outcomes),
- actions required to achieve the targets (with reference to those who are responsible for taking actions),
- a statement of how the school will check if the targets have been achieved and
- a time frame for achievement of the targets.
The Board of Management is responsible for ensuring that a brief summary of the SSE and SIP are provided to the whole school community. This summary is available for download (below).
Further details on the SSE process are available here: http://schoolself-evaluation.ie/post-primary/
School Improvement Plans
School Self Evaluation Newsletters: