Annual reflection
Schools reflect on their progress at the end of each year to ensure they are on track towards achieving the improvement measures in their Strategic Improvement Plan.
Purpose
As part of the School Excellence cycle, schools complete an annual reflection to evaluate the effectiveness of their initiatives, including the allocation of funds, towards achieving improved student outcomes.
Annual reflection is a key component of the four-year Strategic Improvement Plan (SIP). Completing the annual reflection helps schools to consider their progress and achievements, and make high level decisions about the next phase of their strategic planning and implementation, to ensure they stay on track towards their intended outcomes.
Animation for annual reflection
As part of the School Excellence cycle, schools complete an annual reflection to evaluate both the impact of their initiatives, and how their allocation of resources is contributing to improved student outcomes. This helps schools make high level decisions and ensure they are on track for achieving the intended purpose of their Strategic Improvement Plan.
When evaluating the effectiveness of the planned initiatives and activities, it is important for schools to consider not just evidence of activity, but also evidence of process quality, and importantly, evidence of impact. This evidenced-based evaluation identifies the effectiveness of initiatives and progress towards achieving improvement measures.
It is also important to reflect on how needs-based funding has been used to enable successful initiatives that support sustained growth. Through the annual reflection, schools evaluate their progress and make informed judgments for the next phase of their school’s plan. This information is shared with the community when it is published in the school's annual report.
SPaRO allows schools to have a clear view of the activities they have implemented, their ongoing evaluations and the evidence that informs progress, improvement and future directions.
The annual reflection includes evaluating the progress towards achieving improvement measures and the impact of needs-based funding. Schools start by reflecting on the enablers and/or barriers to implementing their initiatives while designing the next steps needed to achieve the improvement measure. Schools also report the extent of achievement of the annual progress measures.
Finally, schools evaluate how their needs-based funding has been used to enable key initiatives. Improved features in SPaRO make it easier for schools to consider the resources allocated, the initiatives funded, and the impact of these activities.
The information entered in SPaRO during the annual reflection auto-populates into sections of the school’s annual report.
The most important aspect of the annual reflection is schools evaluating their progress to make informed judgments for the next phase of their school’s plan.
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Evaluating your initiatives
When reflecting on the effectiveness of your school’s initiatives towards achieving the progress measures, it is important to consider evidence of activity, evidence of process quality and evidence of impact.
The guiding question to consider for annual reflection is: ‘What progress have we made, and what impact have we seen, as a result of the implementation of our initiatives in our Strategic Improvement Plan?’ Using the reflect and reset toolkit will help you to:
- reflect on your evidence
- plan your communication with stakeholders
- make evidence-informed decision for future planning and continuous improvement.
Access the annual reflection support materials for schools (staff only), which include sample statements for achievement of progress measures, samples of evaluation of needs-based funding, reflect and reset resources and more.
Evaluating the impact of needs-based funding
Schools assess the allocation of resources to fund their initiatives and evaluate the impact of needs-based funding across their SIP.
When reflecting on the expenditure of needs-based funding, school leaders evaluate the impact of their initiatives through the activities that have been implemented using needs-based funding.
The information schools have entered into SPaRO provides a clear view of what was implemented, the funding source/s used, the ongoing evaluations and the evidence that demonstrates progress and informs future planning.
Completing your annual report
The evaluation of initiatives towards achieving progress measures and the impact of needs-based funding, which is completed in SPaRO as part of the annual reflection process, then auto-populates the strategic directions and needs-based funding sections of your school’s annual report.
Each school’s annual report is published on their school website, in line with the the School Excellence Policy. The annual report is an important tool to facilitate community liaison and engagement.
The annual report section is available in SPaRO in Term 1 Week 5 and must be completed and published on the school website, by the end of Term 1.
School support for Annual Reflection
Further information and support for schools completing their annual reflection and annual report can be found on the Annual Reflection support page (staff online).
Learn more
- Watch the animation on annual reflection on SEiA resources
- Access annual reflection support for schools (staff only)
- View sample of progress measure statements (staff only)
- View sample of needs-based funding evaluation (staff only)
- Access the SPaRO software platform (staff only)
- Contact the SSI team on sparo@det.nsw.edu.au or on 02 7814 3853.