School Self Review Tool: Information for teachers

Introduction

Your school will be using the Wellbeing@School website and tools to conduct a number of surveys across the school to find out about the different dimensions of school climate in your school.

The W@S website and surveying tools are designed to support schools to engage with the whole school community in a self-review process to address the different aspects of school life with the aim of enhancing the social and emotional climate of the school. 

The website provides schools with access to practical evidence-based tools, resources, and services, a 5-step self-review process, and information about how to get started.

The surveying tools used for this have been developed by NZCER and are a part of the Wellbeing@School website and tools. This website is administered by NZCER and funded by the Ministry of Education as one component of the Positive Behaviour for Learning (PB4L) action plan.

What is Wellbeing@School about?

The Wellbeing@School website hosts a range of tools, resources, and services for New Zealand schools. This site supports school staff to engage in a self-review process that has the overall aim of enhancing the social climate by focusing on ways to increase caring and safe behaviours and reduce behaviours such as student bullying.

Research shows that when young people feel safe and cared about at school, they are better able to learn.

For more information visit the Wellbeing@School website

Click on the link for the Wellbeing@School Booklet [pdf]  Wellbeing at School Booklet

 

School Self-Review Tool

You may have been asked by a member of the leadership team if you would be willing to take part in the collaborative completion of the School Self-Review Tool (SSRT).This process should be voluntary and you should not have to take part if you do not want to.

The SSRT is essentially an audit tool that is designed to support school staff to review current school practice to identify areas of strength as well as next steps in regard to promoting a safe and caring social environment that deters behaviours such as bullying. The process which schools use to complete the SSRT is as important as the content. The tool aims to encourage dialogue between staff.  The SSRT has two components: a School Self Review Tool (SSRT) one copy of which is completed by a review team, and a Teacher Survey for all teaching staff.

The SSRT and the Teacher Survey both include a range of parallel questions about different aspects of school life:  

  • school-wide leadership, climate, policies, and practices
  • how teachers teach, and what happens in classrooms
  • student culture and behaviour, and
  • how connections are made with the school community.

The SSRT has fourteen extra questions (Questions 44, 45, 50, 51, 64-67 and 137-142) that staff may highlight for further discussion when completing the SSRT.

It is up to your school how you complete the SSRT but the Wellbeing@School website provides your school with some ideas about a suggested process.

Essentially the process that your school may use is:

  • Arrange a professional learning meeting with staff to look at the hardcopy of the SSRT/Teacher survey
  • Send out the link to all teachers involved for them to complete the online Teacher survey
  • Organise a group of volunteer staff (school leaders and teachers) to complete the SSRT as a group (it is important that all staff are volunteers and feel comfortable about their involvement)
  • Conduct a second professional learning meeting to agree on a combined set of SSRT results for your school
  • Either the SSRT is completed at this second meeting or the results are entered online soon after.

 

The Wellbeing@School Teacher Survey

All or some teachers at your school may have been asked to complete the Wellbeing@School Teacher Survey.

The Teacher Survey is one component of the SSRT. It is for all staff who teach students.  The Teacher Survey is designed to enable schools with more than 5 staff to systematically collect data on teachers’ perspectives about school life. This data is then used to support the review team to complete the final SSRT. Therefore the Teacher Survey needs to be completed before the SSRT. The Teacher Survey includes a sub-set of the SSRT questions.

The Teacher Survey is completed anonymously. The Survey Administrator will send an email to all (or some) teachers. This includes a link to the online survey site. Teachers are asked to register, decide on a password and then complete the survey. Teachers should have the right to opt out.

Teachers responses to the Teacher survey are used to produce a Teacher: Items at a glance report which can be used to assist the review team to complete the SSRT (as long as the number of teachers completed the survey is large enough to ensure anonymity).

The Wellbeing@School Student Survey

All or some classes at your school may also be completing the Wellbeing@School Student Survey.

The Wellbeing@School Student Survey is being designed to enable schools to systematically collect data from students. This anonymous survey will ask students questions about their views of school and the strategies they and their school already use to promote caring and safe behaviours and address behaviours like bullying. The survey will also collect data on students’ experiences of different types of behaviours.

What will happen to the data from your school?
Ethics and confidentiality

Any information collected from the Wellbeing@School tools will be confidential. Responses from individuals from the student and teacher surveys should be completely confidential. The data will be password protected and located in a secure online database. The data will form a database that will be added to over time. NZCER may use the data to refine the national reference sample and check the validity of the surveys tools, and to provide aggregate/grouped summary reports to the Ministry of Education and agencies approved by the Ministry of Education.

Because only grouped data will be made available no individuals or schools will be identifiable in any way, and no individual school data will be accessible by any third parties.