Aiming for excellence

The launch, a fortnight ago, of Knowing Our School, the latest publication by the Operations Department of the Education Division in conjunction with the Ministry of Education, Youth and Employment, is the apex of a relatively long process which started with the introduction in Malta of school development planning.

The latter started evolving in 1997 when assistant directors who had shadowed HM Inspectors at the Scottish Office in Edinburgh held a meeting about the subject for heads of school. Later on in the year the Education Division invited the Scottish Office to Malta and they delivered a short course.

It had as its main speakers ElMIs from the Scottish Office. The seminar informed and inspired the participants who subsequently launched school development planning in their respective schools.

In January 1999, after schools had formed their first school development plan (SDP), Ms Carmelina Debono, director operations gave a brief to a committee made up of 18 heads hailing from different sectors of the educational system, to prepare proposals for a set of SDP guidelines and of performance indicators. The members in the group began the process by recounting and discussing experiences gleaned during their own school-based SDP exercise. A broad spectrum of SDP strategies was thus recorded.

The group then started writing their SDP guidelines adopting as a model the Scottish Education Office publication How Good is Our School: Self-evaluation Using Performance Indicators. As a result a version suitable to the needs of our educational scenario was compiled.

The draft of these guidelines included:

¤ The advice that there was to be an emphasis on quality education in our schools

¤ An introduction to school development planning

¤ A mission statement/aims section

¤ The seven key areas of a school's activity

¤ An audit section which concentrated mostly on performance indicators, their structure and their usefulness in the school development planning process

¤ Action plans

The group dealt with PIs in detail aiming at the compilation of a set of qualitative indicators of a school's work to complement the traditional quantitative indictors such as attendance rates and examination results. The first group adapted PIs relative to two key areas: learning and teaching and support for pupils.

In July 1999 the results of the committee's work were distributed to all heads of school and their comments were sought.

At the beginning of scholastic year 2001/2 the SDP group was reconvened with some new members being added including director operations Cecilia Borg. The brief was to continue the work on the adaptation to the Maltese scene of three other key areas: curriculum, ethos and management. A novel addition was the compilation of checklists to complement the Maltese performance indicators.

In January 2002 the results of the second phase of the work of the SDP committee were presented to heads of school and intensely discussed and amended during a seminar organised for the purpose. The seminar also decided to modify the title of performance indicators to read quality indicators in consonance with the modern trend of aiming at total quality management in all institutions.

Following the seminar, the committee was reconvened again and the findings of the meeting for heads were discussed. It was also decided to proceed with the adaptation of the remaining key areas relative to attainment and resources. At this point it was decided to change the method of working. The group was divided into a number of sub-groups who concluded work on all the key areas. A separate committee was finally set up to review and edit the work of the other sub-groups.

During the final stages of the publication the editing committee was joined by Mary Vella, ex-director curriculum management, who provided her expertise to fine-tune the product to be the ideal tool with which heads and staff could carry out an audit of their school.

Some members of the editing committee have been very active in disseminating the findings of the various SDP committees since they have conducted several professional staff development sessions in various schools during which members of staff were addressed on school development planning and subsequently helped to evaluate their own schools through the use of Maltese quality indicators. It is hoped that this publication will help Maltese schools gradually evaluate their own work in the key areas of their activity.

Consequently they will identify their strengths and weaknesses. They will subsequently seek ways in which to maintain their strong sectors and to formulate and carry out action plans to correct their weaknesses.

The next step based on the knowledge each teacher has of school development planning, is the development of the performance management programme for each teacher whereby every member of school staff will indicate his/her personal contribution towards the implementation of the SDP. Thus we will have a complete and comprehensive tool which will help schools to ensure excellence in the education they impart.

Mr Bonello is chairman of SDP committee.