特殊教師網頁學術文章----學校自評

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Question

How far do you consider that the idea of school self-evaluation (SSE) contributes to achieving school development and accountability in the Hong Kong educational context? What factors should be taken into account in order to implement SSE effectively? Justify your answer with appropriate analysis and illustrative examples.

Introduction to SSE

“Is Our School a Hong Kong School of Today and Tomorrow? A Self-evaluating School is the Way to Success”, this is a heading of the School Development through School Self-evaluation Project. The Education and Manpower Bureau (EMB) in Hong Kong emphasized that we need a successful way to success through School Self-Evaluation System in the future. So, they said that a Hong Kong school of today and tomorrow is one in which there is a shared belief that school improvement is the right and responsibility of every single member of the school community. (Education and Manpower Bureau, 2003)

In the letter to schools dated 9 May 2003, Mrs. Fanny Law, the Permanent Secretary for Education and Manpower, said that she reaffirm their commitment to building a strong school development and accountability by external school review. (Assignment File, P.42) They believed that rigorous and systematic school self-evaluation, based on genuine evidence, including data on student performance, is the driving force for continuous improvement. Education systems of other developed countries showed that self-evaluation can effectively support continuous school development and ensure public accountability for the quality of education delivered.

Education and Manpower Bureau have developed a quality assurance inspection process and a performance indicators framework in four domains. These four domains include management and organization, learning and teaching, student support and school ethos, and student performance. However, three key areas for improvement have been identified from the education sector and current quality assurance processes. Firstly, there is the need to support school self-evaluation with systematic tools, processes and performance measures. Secondly, there is the need to make available key performance measures with various territory norms so that schools are better able to assess their strengths and weaknesses and identify how they might improve. Lastly, there is the need for all schools to benefit from external school review within a timeframe consistent with a school’s development cycle. Therefore, to enhance school development and accountability, the way forward is to empower self-evaluation in all schools and conduct external school review as a complementary process. (Assignment File, P.43)

Outline the key features of SSE

The key elements of School Self-Evaluation are planning, implementation and monitoring, and reporting and reviewing. This is a cycle process at the school level to enhance school development and accountability. In the planning process, the information of school vision and mission and external school review need to be considered for sound planning. The outcome of planning should be produced as school development and action plan. In the reporting and reviewing process, the outcome of evaluation and review need to be produced as school reports. The results of the reporting and reviewing process will influence school vision and mission, external school review, and planning indirectly. In the heart of this cycle process is the student learning outcomes. (Assignment File, P.43)

Mrs. Fanny Law also emphasized some strategies in the following. She thought whole school approach will bring about coherence and strengthen collaboration communication and ownership among members of the school community. Moreover, as education change is dynamic and complicated, a school has to understand the needs and characteristics of its students, evaluate its own strengths and weaknesses, set priorities and goals, devise strategies to achieve its goals, and develop an action plan to build the capacity for educational change and bring about the intended outcomes. (Assignment File, P.44)

Also, schools will need to provide school level information on Key Performance Measures (KPM) that mentioned above. Some measurement tools such as survey questionnaires will be provided by EMB to assist schools collect relevant information for self-evaluation and provide feedback to support school-based management. (Assignment File, P.44) Furthermore, school will need to report their KPM annually with use of evidence and data. These evaluation reports should be accessible to stakeholders for transparency and accountability.

Lastly, EMB will conduct external school review of public sector schools for validating a school’s self-evaluation and to arrive at an agreed post-review improvement agenda with the school. So, school performance can be gauged and developmental potential tapped. It is expected that by 2006/07, all Hong Kong schools will have completed the first four-year cycle of external school review. (Assignment File, P.45)

SSE framework can enhance school improvement and external accountability

Before discuss SSE framework whether can enhance school development and accountability, their definitions will be clearly stated. School improvement can be defined as a distinct approach to educational change that enhances student outcomes as well as strengthening the school’s capacity for managing change. School improvement is about raising student achievement through focusing on the teaching and learning process and the conditions which support it. (Hopkins et al, 1994) Accountability can be defined as the proving of quality and development to the improving of quality. (Cuttance, 1994) From the above definitions, school improvement and accountability are very closely related with quality management. Quality management is concerned with defining and measuring what we are seeking to do and attempting to improve it. (OUHK, 2004a) The management cycle is planning, implementing, evaluating, and reviewing or rethinking that influenced by organizational values and strategic plan. Such definition is similar with the key features of school self-evaluation mentioned above.

The main approach of school self-evaluation is to use the key performance measures to measure what level the school belongs. These key performance measures are similar with education quality indicator that is the indicator used to describe the key aspects of education quality in input, process, and outcome at the school level or at the system level. (Cheng, 1995) Cheng stated that the design of quality indicators should serve the function of assessing and monitoring education quality and effectiveness at the school level and at the system level.

According to Nuttall (1990), good quality indicators can provide at least one of the four types of information. First, this information can help to describe the current functioning and effectiveness of school system. Second, the information can help school members, policy-makers, educators, and the public to predict future performance of the school system. Third, the information can help policy-makers and educators better understand how the school system works and to assess the implication of changes over time. Last, the information provides insight into current or potential problems in the school system that are of particular concern to policy-makers or that are susceptible to change through action.

At the school level, the information provided by the quality indicators can be used to ensure school performance and effectiveness towards the planned school goals and education standards. Moreover, it also can help the school to reflect school’s environment, reconsider school’s direction, re-establish policies, replan action programs and reorganize structures. Furthermore, it also can help individuals, groups, and the schools to learn, improve, assure education quality and school accountability to the public, students and parents. (Cheng, 1995) He also stated that the functions of quality indicators that are the key performance indicators may be classified as two type’s functions. The first is formative functions that for internal improvement and development and second is summative functions that for accountability and assurance of education quality or cost effectiveness.

Again, school self-evaluation is based on the schools’ own initiative and resources and therefore less expensive. It is easier for the schools to be committed to it and can be better for internal improvement and development. (Cheng, 1995) In the process of school self-evaluation, the schools are no need to use too much money. Many seminars and workshops about school self-evaluation are organized by EMB, the school waste little money to find the experts to train their teachers to do school self-evaluation.

The information of the key performance measures in the performance indicators framework, there is not only the products or outputs indicators, but also are value-added measurement. In the student performance indicators, not only the public examination results that are HKCEE and HKALE need to be publicized, but also show the academic value-added performance such as English Language and Chinese Language and so on. Many researchers argue that value-added measures that consider process factors are more valid indicators of organizational effectiveness than raw measures. (OUHK, 2004b) Therefore, some items of indicators in the key performance measures can contribute to achieving accountability that is school effectiveness.

There may be many different ways to improve education quality at the school level. According to Cheng (1995), the basic approached to enhancing education quality can be classified as the external control approach and the school-based approach. The external control approach is a traditional approach that emphasizes the function of the structural system and close supervision from the central authority as quality assurance inspection (QAI) before. This approach is often very expensive and ineffective because it fails to motivate schools’ commitment to self improvement. (Cheng, 1995) On the contrary, the school-based approach is a new approach following the current school management reform. This approach emphasizes flexibility and school’s own initiative and self development for better education quality, and assumes the schools as “self-managing systems”. Enhancement of school development can be achieved through a school-based mechanism comprised of development planning, staff development, and self-evaluation. (Cheng, 1995) Many developed countries have transformed form external control approach to school-based approach that reflects the importance of the school-based approach to school improvement and education quality. The school self-evaluation are similar with school-based approach can enhance school development or improvement and meet external accountability demands that is education quality.

It seems that the idea of school self-evaluation can contributes to achieving school both development and accountability in the Hong Kong educational context. However, since all schools in Hong Kong have little experience in school self-evaluation, over-emphasis on the accountability purpose often increase the tendency that the schools create self-defensive mechanism that will hinder school self learning and improvement. On the contrary, if the schools focus too much on school internal development and improvement but less on accountability assurance, those concerned may worry whether the schools are accountable and the educational services are worth the money invested. (Cheng, 1995)

On the other hand, school self-evaluation may not be so convincing for accountability purpose obviously because the information from self-evaluation may be biased by the evaluators themselves. (Cheng, 1995) There are many ways to change the results unintentionally of the key performance measures in school self-evaluation. For example, when the teachers ask the students to fill the attitude questionnaires, the teacher may lead the students to select the right answers that benefit to the school. This information may mislead the public about school performance of students’ attitude to school. Thus, the balance between school development and accountability need to be considered for the quality assurance.

Factors influence the effective implementation of SSE

In view of above discussion, the school self-evaluation can enhance school development or improvement and meet external accountability demands basically. However, some factors should be taken into account in order to implement school self-evaluation more effectively. The factors will be examined in the following.

First, the major issue of tension is the need for EMB to achieve a balance between ‘managing’ and ‘supporting’ schools. (Davies and Rudd, 2001) Some questions will be raised as ‘Just how far could EMB management and intervention in these processes go?’ and ‘To what extent could the schools be relied on to implement rigorous and demanding self-assessment?’ Some teachers said that not enough of the schools were asking themselves difficult questions. A cooperative relation between EMB and schools should be build up for on going to common objectives of school development and accountability about school self-evaluation. Otherwise, the teachers will not be cooperative to implement such school self-evaluation, more great policy is useless.

Second, the factor is whether school self-evaluation processes should be EMB-driven or school-driven. (Davies and Rudd, 2001) Although many EMB officers expressed a desired for schools to have ‘ownership’ of the process of self-evaluation, and that such self-evaluation should be from the ‘bottom up’, some teachers thought that school self-evaluation largely EMB-led in practice. Many notices and circulars from EMB about the instructions of school self-evaluation have sent to school more frequently. The schools management only can follow such instructions to prepare the information of the key performance indicators. The schools management has seldom power to bargain what indicators the schools have or need. Obviously, it is very difficult to set up an ownership feeling within the staff in the school and a bottom up process in self-evaluation. Therefore, this factor must be considered when implementing the school self-evaluation.

Third, the factor in teacher level also needs to be considered for more effective implementation of self-evaluation. Anxiety about the impact of self-evaluation on teachers’ workload was a widespread concern. Teachers in some school felt that they were suffering initiative fatigue. (Davies and Rudd, 2001) Recently, many educational reforms in Hong Kong were happen. Many teachers have many works need to be done both in school hours and in family hours. Workload of them are very heavy than before. Some teachers can not adapt such working pressure, and then they suffer from psychological problem, even commit suicide in some cases. The school self-evaluation need the teachers to collect many information about different key performance indicators and attend many meetings to discuss the planning, implementation of action plans, how to monitoring, writing report and so on. The teachers have not only the work of school self-evaluation, but also have many lessons need to be prepared and teach and other administrative works such as discipline, counseling and extra-curricular activities. Thus, providing sufficient resources and manpower is an important factor to implement the school self-evaluation more effectively.

In view of the above discussion, some factors should be taken into account in order to implement school self-evaluation effectively. These factors include the cooperative relationship between EMB and the schools in school self-evaluation, build up a ownership of staff to implement school self-evaluation, and teachers’ workload and resources in implementation of school self-evaluation. If these factors can not be considered in the processes of school self-evaluation, “Is Our School a Hong Kong School of Today and Tomorrow? A Self-evaluating School is the Way to Success” may not be fulfilled as a successful way.
Reference

Assignment File, (2004), E805 Effective Leadership and Management in Education: Assignment File, Hong Kong, Open University of Hong Kong.

Cuttance, P. (1994) ‘Monitoring Educational Quality Through Pls for School Practice’ in Preedy, M., Glatter, R. and Levacic, R. (eds) Educational Management: Strategy quality, and Resources, Buckingham, Open University Press.

Cheng, Y. C. (1995) ‘School education quality: conceptualization, monitoring and enhancement’ in Open University of Hong Kong E805: Effective Leadership and Management in Education, Supplementary Material for Hong Kong Students, Hong Kong, The Open University of Hong Kong.

Davies, D. and Rudd, P. (2001) ‘The Effectiveness of School Self-Evaluation Strategies – a Review’ <http://www.nfer.ac.uk/htmldocs/html/Outcome_SSE.html> (Accessed 14 Oct 04).

Education and Manpower Bureau, (2003) Is Our School a Hong Kong School of Today and Tomorrow? A Self-evaluating School is the Way to Success, Hong Kong , the Printing Department, HKSAR.

Hopkins, D., Ainscow, M. and West, M. (1994) School Improvement in an Era of Change, London: Cassell.

Nuttall, D.L.(1990) The functions and limitations of international education indicators. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Boston.

OUHK (2004a) E805 Effective Leadership and Management in Education Study Guide: Section 9 Managing for Quality: Meeting Learners’ Needs, Hong Kong, Open University of Hong Kong.

OUHK (2004b) E805 Effective Leadership and Management in Education Study Guide: Section 6 Organizational Effectiveness, Hong Kong, Open University of Hong Kong.