From compliance to impact: Flipping the direction of self-evaluation to improve impact – Part 1

Self-evaluation – what is currently happening across Wales?

The quality of education in Wales for school children is not where it should be. One reason for this is that schools’ ability to self-evaluate their work is currently missing the mark. In this three-part series I will be looking at why this is and what can be done about it.

Traditionally the school development plan is what actions leaders and teachers take to improve learning and how success will be measured. But what if, we flip the direction of self-evaluation and monitoring so that we start in the classroom and work backwards to the plan?

The new school improvement guidance from Welsh Government published in January of this year, places self-evaluation squarely at the centre of the improvement process. It is described as “an ongoing cycle of improvement” (Welsh Government, 2022/2026) and “Schools should lead their own improvement through regular self-evaluation and planning”, but what if our idea of what self-evaluation actually is, is back to front?

The situation in Wales in terms of self-evaluation and the leadership of improvement is far from perfect. Estyn gave 30% of primary schools, 50% of all-age schools and 73% of secondary schools inspected in 2024/5 a recommendation for self-evaluation and improvement (Estyn, no date).

The key criticisms from Estyn were that “too often, self-evaluation is superficial, compliance-driven and insufficiently focused on learners’ progress. Weak self-evaluation undermines improvement planning, leading to vague priorities and limited accountability. This remains a system-wide concern…Unless self-evaluation sharpens significantly at every level, other reforms will be weakened.” (Estyn, no date).

So, there you have it. Self-evaluation is not good enough across the whole system and it is even threatening the success of education itself. In light of this, there are three key questions to ask:

1. What is currently happening?
2. Why is it not working?
3. How could self-evaluation be done better?

In this three-part blog, I am going to answer all three questions, and I will use research to suggest a new approach to self-evaluation that brings the focus sharply onto learning and ensures that school improvement is genuinely a whole school activity.

So, let’s start with the idea that self-evaluation is a top down rather than bottom-up process.

Every school sets improvement priorities that drive their strategic school development plan. These priorities are supposed to be identified during the self-evaluation process. In each school leadership will review the school’s overall effectiveness by looking at pupil outcomes, the quality of teaching, behaviour and wellbeing and the effectiveness of their leadership and curriculum.

But how do schools actually do this?

The biggest influence in any school is created by performance data. That is, the standards that pupils achieve. In secondary schools in Wales, that will be both their GCSE results and their targets as well as any internal assessment data that they have against what is being taught. So, end of topic tests and assessments of whether learning objectives have been met. In primary schools they won’t have GCSEs of course, they will just have the national personalised assessment data, which we know measures progress not standards.

So, for a primary school, accurately answering the question, “is what we are doing good enough?” becomes really difficult. Even in a secondary school where GCSE targets and outcomes are available, it is still really difficult to accurately identify whether what the school is providing is good enough for the pupils that it serves with any accuracy. Especially when you consider that outcomes are only one measure. Wellbeing, behaviour, curriculum, leadership and the quality of teaching, not just learner outcomes, all contribute to that self-evaluation of whether what the school is doing is good enough.

What does good enough mean? What does it look like? How do you know when you have reached the required standard of being ‘good enough’, as opposed to ‘not quite there yet’?

In reality schools will analyse their data, use monitoring activities such as book looks, lesson observations and pupil voice and combine this with their Estyn inspection recommendations and their own professional judgement to set their priorities. And this is where things can get quite messy.

Watch out for part two in this blog series where I will be analysing why the traditional approach to self-evaluation is failing to make the difference pupils need.

This summer we’re holding two NEW self-evaluation workshops – in Caerphilly on 24th June and in Conwy on 1st July. To book your place now, click here.

References

Estyn (no date) Annual report. Available at: Estyn Annual Report [Accessed: 25 March 2026]

Welsh Government, 2022/2026. School improvement guidance: School improvement model: a collective effort to improve education standards. Hwb. Available at: https://hwb.gov.wales/school-improvement-and-leadership/evaluation-improvement-and-accountability/school-improvement-guidance/#school-improvement-model:-a-collective-effort-to-improve-education-standards [Accessed 25 March 2026]