29 June 2005
Parents who choose a school by looking at VCE results, class sizes or budget alone, will not get an accurate picture of the school's performance or how it will cater for their child, a Monash academic claims.
Dr Martin Samy, as part of his PhD research in the Faculty of Education, has identified eight indicators that give a more balanced picture of a school's effectiveness.
"The media and the public often use single indicators such as VCE results to measure effectiveness of particular schools, but it is not the whole picture at all," Dr Samy said.
The eight equally-ranked indicators identified by Dr Samy are: school leadership, information and analysis (how the school uses data to improve internal communication and performance), strategic quality planning, human resource development and management (teaching issues) management of process quality (how the school manages its competency levels), quality and operational results (how the school evaluates feedback), community focus and satisfaction (how the school interfaces with parents and the wider community) and student outcomes.
"I rank each indicator equally as I believe each aspect is equally important to a school's performance," Dr Samy said.
As part of his research, Dr Samy asked staff and parents at dozens of public and private Melbourne schools to complete a detailed survey in which they scored their school in each of the eight areas according to how the school currently performed and where they felt there was room for improvement.
An inner Melbourne school with a large number of non-English speaking students that did not score well based on VCE results alone, was regarded as highly effective by its community. "It was rated very highly for community communication, strategic planning and teaching and learning," Dr Samy said.
Another high school was so impressed with the survey results of its operations that it has used those results as the basis for the development of its charter for its triennial review.
Dr Samy will present his findings to an international education conference in Spain next week.
For further information or to interview Dr Martin Samy, contact Ms Robyn Anns, Monash Media Communications, on +61 3 9905 9317 or 0417 568 781.
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