Playback Learning Academy has produced a range of curricular resources that focus on repositioning wellbeing to maximise children’s learning, along with a wide range of self-evaluation resources to support school improvement planning.

We believe that a healthy school is an inclusive school, free from discrimination and exclusion, where everyone is respected, and everyone’s contribution is valued.

This resource How Well Do We Know Our School? offers an alternative approach to school improvement planning. It comes from the desire to support schools and teachers not only in creating a healthy and inclusive school community, but also in developing a participatory self-evaluation approach to improved planning and practice.

It helps to build confidence because it starts by acknowledging the good practice which already exists. It is a hopeful activity, forward thinking and inspirational and should be embraced at a personal and professional level and through every opportunity including:
• reflective classroom practice
• conversations with learner (‘pupil voice’)
• effective partnership with families
• collegiate and collaborative working in school
• collegiate and collaborative working with partners
• a whole school approach
• collaborative cluster working
• peer support

This resource will support leaders to:

• create opportunities through discussion to identify and prioritise improvements.
• provide a clear account of school strengths, in addition to areas for
  development.
• identify the key sources of evidence underpinning their school’s
  performance and improvements.
• enable schools to plan how they will achieve these improvements.
• identify who will be responsible for taking forward the actions.
• illustrate actions to prioritise areas for improvement.

The resource aims to:

• establish continuous self-evaluation and reflection practice as an integral part of school improvement.
• identify current good planning and practice areas for improvement.
• increase understanding of wellbeing, inclusion and equality in a coherent and integrated way.
• improve outcomes where wellbeing, inclusion and equality are promoted as part of an integrated whole school approach.
• develop healthy and inclusive policy and practice.
• encourage collaboration and participation across the whole school community.
• ensure commitment from all staff.
• give ownership of the process of self-evaluation and disseminate opportunities for leadership to staff.

As an audit tool, the resource materials will help to identify strengths and development needs measured against qualitative and quantitative scores.
The findings from the evaluation of professional practice will help to identify improvement priorities and the production of a school improvement plan.

Evaluation of professional practice

The resource provides school leaders with rigorous self-evaluation activities, helping staff to reflect upon their current practice and the impact on pupils’ learning. This will help towards agreeing a whole school approach in order to establish best practice.

School leaders can select any quality indicator and associated theme to create a self-evaluation activity which can then be used to promote staff development and
improve practice.

The digital resource provides the opportunity to capture, record and contribute their ideas and practice for further professional dialogue and review. School leaders can direct staff to areas in the resource which could aid reflection, selfimprovement and professional learning and they will be able to record and evidence the results and impact via the digital resource.

School leaders can select any quality indicator theme or a selection of statements from the resource which will help individual staff to engage in selfimprovement discussions and promote professional dialogue. It will also provide support for coaching/ mentoring which will facilitate productive PRD meetings.

The How Well Do We Know Our School? resource includes the following quality indicators and their Themes:
QI 1.3 Leadership of Change
QI 2.3 Teaching, Learning and Assessment
QI 2.5 Family Engagement
QI 3.1 Ensuring Wellbeing, Equality and Inclusion
QI 3.2 Raising Attainment and Achievement

We have provided you with a review activity to identify features and evidence of your current practice across all of the quality indicators. This will support you to identify the current good practice taking place as well as to confirm and give confidence when scoring your qualitative and quantitative scores. These are based on triangulation and include:

Area 1: Examples of quantitative data Area

Area: 2: Examples of direct observations of practice

Area 3: Examples of stakeholders’ views

Review the charts below and use them to measure the school performance in both qualitative and quantitative terms.

9 STEPS TO EFFECTIVE DELIVERY