THE School Improvement through Evaluation programme is showing promise among school principals and leaders, as it is about using common sense of what teachers are doing, said an Australian education specialist.
Facilitating principals in a workshop for over a month, Tim Grace of Australia’s Canberra Territory Department of Education and Training said that participants have been very positive.
“I don’t think the notion of evaluation and idea of systems thinking is too frightening,” he told The Brunei Times yesterday.
He added, “It’s not like we’re trying to break new ground, but rather using common sense to make sense of what teachers are doing and that seems to appeal to the principals.”
He said that there are still some issues to address with the new National Education System of the 21st Century (SPN21), even though it has been dubbed as a world class policy.
“Right now, it is absolutely essential that schools do much more than just run and operate, they have to lead in a quality manner that focuses on excellence and production of positive outcomes,” said Tim Grace of Australia’s Canberra Territory Department of Education and Training.
“The SPN21 is a visionary document and it’s just a matter of the Brunei System understanding how it can adapt to meet the needs of SPN21,” he told The Brunei Times yesterday.
Grace is also a representative from Australia’s School Improvement Department. “The department helps schools take responsibility for self-reflection and systems begin to improve. If we use external motivation to get a school to improve, we tend to be pulling the system,” he said.
“If we focus on internal motivation, we help the school reflect on its practice and understand the value of focusing on student outcomes,” he added.
The school will then value its achievement and get an “intrinsic” motivation out of it, he said.
The importance of the department is also significant, in terms of school improvement, he said, adding that it was “a vital bridge between past practices and future practices”.
“The only way the system can really move forward into the equivalent of the SPN21 improvement model is to take hold of the evidence of their own practices and mould that into a strategy of the future,” he said.
He also said that it was necessary to have an individual body to give support at the systems level.
“Without systems thinking, schools tend to struggle and become isolated, so you need some kind of wide structure that helps provide some uniformity and standardised practice,” he said.
However, he said that it was not necessary for Brunei to set up a separate body on school improvement.
“A change of structure in your department isn’t necessary, but a realignment of activity of what the departments are doing,” he said.
In the instance of the Department of Schools’ Inspectorate, he said that they are adapting their practices to suit the needs of SPN21.
“I think that it’s a more realistic thing to do rather than hold a change in department structures,” he said.
It is a more pragmatic approach and is going to work in the context of where the ministry was in the 2009-11 Strategic Plan.
However, in the long run, he said that the system will push departments to restructure themselves. “So as necessary, it will probably happen but not for me to suggest, he said.
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