School improvement and why it matters

School improvement is a continuous process, centred on maximising outcomes for all students, and sustaining this improvement over time.

Fostering equity and excellence in your school is underpinned by a strong moral purpose, and founded upon a shared commitment to ensuring growth and achievement for all students, no matter where they live or what kind of learning challenges they may face.

School improvement is grounded in rigorous self-assessment and analysis of your school's current situation with respect to student outcomes and teaching and leadership practices.

It uses a rich evidence base of quantitative and qualitative data, and is:

• research informed
• continuous
• focused on improving learning, teaching and leadership practices.
  

Explicit use of data enables you to closely monitor student progress and achievement, allowing you to 'put a face to the data'. It supports a collective responsibility for understanding the needs of every student in your school.

All working together towards improvement

The learning of all teachers and leaders is as important as student learning. A deliberate and purposeful focus on continuously developing the capabilities of all teachers and leaders in your school is fundamental to school improvement.

When we work towards being a great school that meets the needs of all of our students, together we are:

• ensuring our students learn through engaging teaching
• leading with a clear vision based on shared values
• partnering proactively with others, especially parents, carers and the local community
• engaging our learners, teachers and leaders in reflection and decision-making
• focusing our culture on student growth, attainment and wellbeing
• strategically targeting all our resources to achieve the student growth, attainment, and wellbeing we have planned.

How the department describes School Excellence

The School Excellence Framework (SEF) supports all NSW public schools in their pursuit of excellence by providing a clear description of the key elements of high quality practice across the 3 domains of learning, teaching and leading.

The framework describes 14 elements across these 3 domains, which define the core business of excellent schools in 3 progressive stages. Each year, every school assesses their practices against the SEF to inform their school plan and their annual report.

The description of excellence in the SEF supports you as you:

• engage with your community in the development of a shared vision
• identify strategic priorities
• track progress, as an ongoing practice, towards your priorities.

The Wellbeing Framework for Schools is a statement that describes what is valued as excellence in student wellbeing in NSW public schools.

It supports your school to create a planned approach to wellbeing, using evidence based strategies that are strengths-based, preventative and focus on early intervention. This includes strengthening your students' cognitive, physical, social, emotional and spiritual wellbeing domains of development.

Your school will achieve this through planning and decision-making at the local level to address the needs of your students.

CESE and 'What works best'

The School Excellence Framework (SEF) supports school leaders to ensure that consistency, expectations and assumptions are aligned across all teaching and learning at school, and there is strong alignment between the SEF and the themes of CESE's 'What works best'.

Read the following 'What works best' publications from the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation (CESE):

• What works best: 2020 update
  
• What works best in practice
• What works best toolkit