To score of not to score
Peter Dankmeijer, director GALE 05-05-2020 17:22
Today, we posted the short video about the dilemmas we faced about scoring schools https //youtu.be/Auf16jqwJhQ
Peter Dankmeijer, director GALE 05-05-2020 17:27
Interestlingly, when we asked the question about scoring on two international conferences, teachers and principals said they did not like scoring, while NGOs and politicians aids it would be useful to make schools more accountable. But from the recent survey among the teachers, students and other non-school stakeholders, it looks as if it is the other way around the teachers and students are not afraid to be scored and most even want the results published mandatorily, while national and European "stakeholders" (NGOs supporting schools) are much more hesistant about scoring an publishing...
Sapalidou Pavlina 10-05-2020 16:47
I think evaluation is very important. When we are writting a test it doesn't matter who wrote better but to notice our faults answers and try to find a new way to solve it. But we must not
evaluate all the schools because each school has different facilities, students, attitude and are in a different countries. Evaluation must be according to scale and not to say if a school is good or not. t's subjective to say that and we can't be asboluted. Also, schools have to be evaluated by organization and not by themselves, because they will not be objectived
Maria Koufi 10-05-2020 21:21
Scoring schools according to their anti bullying policies is good for many reasons.First of all,schools should reflect on themselves in order to find any mistakes the may make when it comes to dealing with bullying.Previously bullying was usually neglected and many students faced bullies without the school even interfering.Now that we are all making efforts to make schools a "bullying-free" environment they need to be translucent about it and work with organizations trained for that purpose who will score them objectively.Having different scales is fairer because it is more objective and may motivate schools to understand the mistakes that keep them from getting an A leading to better results.Also it is important for parents to know how safe a school is when choosing for the best one for their kids
Peter Dankmeijer 15-05-2020 14:55
I just got some interesting articles of professor Peter Smith from 2008, 2012 and 2016, who experimented with scoring the antibullying policy of UK schools in England and Ireland. The list has 34 checkpoints and the average the schools scored attention to only about 40 to 50 of the items. Schools often had regulations for behavior and punishment, but much less attention for a good school culture and prevention, agreement on responsibilities of others than teachers, on how to follow up incidents, and how to manage records and use them for improving policy. Also attention for specific forms of bullying like racial homophobic sexual bullying were reported less. His conclusion "schools would clearly benefit from more encouragement and guidance on maximizing the effectiveness of the antibullying policies".
ANNA BAFITI 17-05-2020 12:48
Evaluation must be inherent in every organized activity, so it is necessary here as well, in order to determine the degree of fulfillment of the objectives and to provide the possibility of corrective manipulations. The publication of its results, however, has a risk the schools would indulge in an effort to idealize the situation, in the context of the competition that would be developed. This would also result in their categorization into good and bad ones, with a very negative impact on their operation. So evaluation yes, but only as a tool to guide action for the school community itself.
As for the scoring results, I would prefer the energy efficiency scheme to a dichotomous scheme, as I agree with the students that it would provide an incentive to achieve the goal step by step. In addition, the -simplifying- categorization of policies into sufficient and insufficient leads to the loss of useful information.
External evaluation, combined with internal evaluation, would -under conditions- help in the objective evaluation of the school policy.
Christine Karagianni 18-05-2020 08:44
Evaluation is an integral part of any improvement process. The question is with what criteria will it be done, so that it really leads to a review and improvement of the techniques, the tools of the results and not to be an end in itself. I agree with the assessment and the logic of energy efficiency with a label, provided, however, that the specifics and needs of each school are taken into account. It is also important for a school to be evaluated according to the progress it achieves and not according to the conditions that exist in other school units.