A GOOD SCHOOL

A ‘good’ school is one that:

• is collaborative;

• is pupil centred;

However, despite the often-stated desire to improve and develop strong home–school links in our
secondary schools, we still have a sudden drop in parental involvement at student age 11, with no
satisfactory explanation for it. Schools must address the very real need to understand and to build
upon home-learning. Parental involvement comes in a complete – all or nothing – package and
schools must choose the whole deal or content themselves with what is, in effect, no deal at all.
Keeping parents informed about the learning taking place at school and about what they, the parent,
can do to enhance and improve it, it’s essential.

We need to monitor, evaluate and review.

Monitoring, evaluating and reviewing (MER) are activities fundamental to the fortunes of all schools
but they are very much processes to be undertaken rather than outcomes to be achieved, and unless
they come as a package, one with the other, they will bring a feel-good factor for the adults involved
– a feeling of earning one’s money – but very little else. Three separate, different and important skills
they might be, but it is as a team like Athos, Porthos and Aramis or, as I prefer to think, Charlton, Law
and Best, that they score and score highly.

However, important though they are, each of these processes, or even the combination, does not
have a divine right to raise student achievement, and the doing of them is, in itself, not enough.
There must always be a clear and present and, where possible, quantified link with learning and
therefore with student progress; this link must always be uppermost in the teacher or school leader’s
thoughts. He or she must be fully alert to the fact that an activity that has zero or even limited effect
on learning must be regarded as time wasted and must, given that time in school with students is so
curtailed and often incomplete, be eschewed.

It follows, therefore, that no school can afford not to participate in monitoring, evaluating and
reviewing, but that all involved must fully understand these skilled activities; they must also realise
that one follows the other like night follows day, and that their contribution to student learning and
progress must be sufficient to make the commitment of time and effort worthwhile.

So, how can we better understand monitoring, evaluating and reviewing and how can we maximise
their effect on student progress?

Since there are differing ‘levels’ of curriculum leaders working in and with schools: senior, middle,
classroom, govern or, LEA, etc., there are differing ‘levels’ of MER. However, the fundamental
processes are the same and can be summarised as follows.