Writing evaluative statements in the Self-Assessment Report

As a self-assessment tool, it is key you write evaluatively in the SAR. The language you use should indicate the grade of the judgement and whether you believe it to be a strength or area for development.

Strengths

The language should indicate whether you feel the strength is outstanding or good from the evaluative language you use. Remember your judgment must be evidence based, that is, you need to have evidence that it is accurate, it can’t rely on opinion or supposition.

If you do not include evaluative language, you are listing actions not evaluating them.

You must include a statement to evidence why you have made this judgement, try to be as specific as possible, include data references, for example achievement rates or survey results.

The statement must demonstrate the impact the strength has on the learner or the provision. If it has no impact them it’s not a strength.

Evaluative statement + evidence + impact statement = effective SAR statement

Considerable investment (evaluative statement) in teacher training has led excellent teaching across the curriculum.  Every tutor achieved at least good in their OTLA (evidence). This means that all learners have ‘good’ tutors supporting them and at least half having an ‘outstanding’ tutor in class (impact).

Areas for development

The evaluative language you use should indicate the current level of the issue.

You must include the evidence as to why you made this judgment- again try to be factual in your response and the impact it has had on the learners or provision.

High staff turnover has led to poor achievement rates (evaluative statement) across Functional Skills at 34% (evidence). This has led to several learners having to resit exams or being unable to progress onto their apprenticeship which is unacceptable (impact).

Many SARs include what success would look like once the area for development has been addressed. Some may include actions that may be taken. This depends on your policies and procedures and SAR and QIP template.

The areas for development and the success criteria included here will become part of your Quality Improvement Plan.

Example

High Functional skills staff turnover (20% retention) has led to poor achievement rates ( evaluative statement) across Functional Skills at 34% overall. (evidence). This has led to several learners having to resit exams or being unable to progress onto their apprenticeship which is unacceptable. (impact).

Actions:

• Additional support for FS staff to be put in place before September. This includes mentoring and coaching for all FS staff from Head of Learning.
• All FS tutors to be given access to teacher training – enrolments to begin in September.
• Quality to team to begin OTLA within 2 weeks of beginning with additional support observation and walk through to continue throughout the year.
• Management to source supply agency to ensure all learners have skilled and qualified teacher in class throughout the year.
• SMT to monitor retention/achievement of learners at QIP meetings.

Success

• Functional Skills achievement rates of 75% to be achieved by English and Maths at all levels.
• Improve retention for FS staff from 20% to 80%
• 100% of exit interviews for all staff to be achieved so SMT can analyse and act of any recurring issues raised.

It maybe you have an outstanding key judgement, and you wish to raise a good area within this to outstanding, this is still an area of development, and it is appropriate to indicate that its good with the evaluative language you use.

Outstanding provision stays that way be continually challenging and striving for improvement, therefore is means you can have area for development within these outstanding key judgements.

Example

Student feedback was excellent overall with 100% of learners recommending their course, but online support achieved 85% of learners felt online support was good or excellent with 15% felt that online support was satisfactory, and it was not consistent and rushed. Every other area achieved at least 90% as excellent and 10% as good, so this is an area for improvement for the team.

Our consultants at Best for Training are all former Ofsted inspectors. We can support you to write your report or challenge and give external scrutiny to your Self Assessment Report. Please get in touch to find out more about the range of expert consultancy services.

Email: contact@bestfortraining.co.uk

Phone: 01702 770030