School Seeks Parent Feedback for School Review

Featherbrook College is undertaking a review process that seeks to evaluate our progression as a (new) school in relation to student outcomes, stakeholder perceptions and program provision. Part of the process is to seek perceptions from parents, students and teachers/staff and as such, last week there were opportunities for parents to contribute to the school self-evaluation. Thank you to all who took the opportunity to put forward constructive and helpful comments. Thank you to those who came to the school on Wednesday evening to contribute to this important process as well. I enjoyed chatting with parents about the school's progression, the things that matter to them and sharing ideas on future considerations.

The process of self-evaluation is a continuous and regular part of a school’s work throughout the year enabling schools to plan for and deliver improvement. Purposeful, high quality self-evaluation makes an important contribution to improving quality in schools and raising the achievement of learners. Self-evaluation is the initial, critical step in the cyclical process that brings about improvement in a school.

Three key questions sit at the heart of effective self-evaluation:

1. How well are we doing?
   
2. How do we know?
   
3. How can we improve things further?

Every four years, schools undertake a deep and rigorous Pre-review Self-evaluation (PRSE) in the term before a review, which synthesises ongoing and formal six-monthly self-evaluations from the previous four years and engages the whole school community in a reflective analysis of the school’s performance.

The school self evaluation is a collaborative effort that forms a collective view about the school’s progress against the goals and targets in the School Strategic Plan (SSP), and in Featherbrook's case, our Annual Implementation Plan as we are a new school. The school places itself against the FISO Continua of Practice for School Improvement. By conducting a thorough and reflective PRSE, schools are supported to clarify and systematically identify the enablers that led to sustained successful outcomes, and the barriers that prevented success.

I look forward to sharing with the broader school community over the coming months, the results of the review and the way this work will inform our very first School Strategic Plan 2020 - 2023.