Professional Performance Review for the Action Learning Principals in School-based Management CHEUNG Wing-ming, Francis The Hong Kong Institute of Education Seminar for the Hong Kong School Leadership Development Network organized by the Asia-Pacific Centre for Education Leadership and School Quality 4 May 2002

2 Challenges of School-based Management (SBM)  Myth- Effective schooling, quality output - Schools could manage their business - Principal, middle management, work group and teachers are able to self manage site-business meeting the school’s unique needs

3 Challenges of School-based Management (SBM)  Truth - Readiness is doubtful - Missing link between effective schooling and SBM - Problems in  vision as the driving force  teacher empowerment  performance review/self-evaluation  learning capacity  strategic planning and staff development  human resource management  crisis / confrontation management  developing a QA mechanism for teaching and learning

4 Key to successful School-based Management  Learning capacity of school  Action learning principals and leaders  Performance review of school Self-evaluation of school plan implementation For professional development and accountability  Principal performance review  Teacher / staff performance review  Performance review for learning – the learning school

5 Functions 1)Formative – professional development 2)Summative – accountability

6 Effect 1)More respect 2)Learning culture development 3)Easier to implement PPR for staff 4)Association with effective schooling

7 What to review?  Generic attributes  School specific attributes Vision School plan School specific tasks

8 What to review?  Capacity of an action learning principal – generic competence use vision as a driving force link vision to action plans link vision to staff development create natural reinforcement in work building a quality assurance framework for teaching and learning teacher empowerment create feedback loop – self-evaluation of school developing a learning culture professional leadership general management skills

9 Factors that Determine an Effective Quality Assurance Mechanism for Teaching & Learning 1)What are the expected standards of different areas of teaching and learning? 2)How to set the standards? Who to set? 3)How are standards (expectations) conveyed to key- stakeholders?

10 Factors that Determine an Effective Quality Assurance Mechanism for Teaching & Learning (cont’d) 4)How to evaluate the achievement of the standards? 5)How are the results of evaluation fedback to stakeholders? 6)What are the consequences of Achievement of standard? Under-achievement of standard?

11 School Specific Performance  Achievement of School plans School mission Specific projects Specific school targets etc.

12 Principles 1)Vision and school plan linked 2)Respect professional autonomy 3)Create staff ownership 4)Reduce threats among teachers and principal 5)Self-reflection – learning from review 6)Impartiality 7)Feedback to teachers

13 Types of Review Bottom-up Management Driven

14 Practical Guide for bottom-up PPR 1)Beginning of school year, ask all teachers in staff meeting to give you two or three expectations of your performance for achievement of the school vision/mission. 2)Elect one senior teacher and one other teacher to help you keep impartial when analyzing the expectations.

15 3)Have all expectations submitted to the two representatives. 4)Ask the two representatives to analyze the result and give you the information without any raw data. 5)Based on the analyzed information, group all the expectations into themes and develop them into questionnaires.

16 6)Limit the number of questions to not more than 30 by deleting the less important ones. 7)Present the questionnaires to all teachers in staff meeting. Explain the reason why you are not able to choose all. 8)Ask teachers to help you in achieving the expectations by friendly reminders and observe your performance with the help of the questionnaire you distributed to them in that meeting.

17 9)Around the end of the school, say June, distribute the questionnaire again in staff meeting to ask teachers to fill in their perception of your performance. 10)Allow 20 minutes for the completion of the survey and then have all the questionnaire collected by the 2 representatives for their analysis.

18 11)Get analysis from the 2 representatives. 12)Study the results and inform / discuss with staff in meeting what you have learnt  distribute the result.

19 Practical Guide for Management-driven PPR 1)Request the principal to set his/her own performance goals and related targets in achieving (a) school goals and (b) school mission in a long run. 2)Come up with an agreed set of performance goals and related targets after discussion with the principal.

20 3)Conduct mid-year review regarding the degree of achievement of the targets. 4)Allow flexibility in revision previously set targets. 5)Provide and support whenever necessary. 6)Concluding review at the end of the review cycle. purpose : What are lessons learnt? What actions next?

21 What Factors Facilitate the Principal to Learn?  Attitude  Capacity  Sensitivity  Ability to reframe negative experience