I have just finished hearing a report on the state of teacher performance reviews in Australia completed by the Grattan Institute.
Its a fairly controversial report as reported in the
- education review,
- ABC in South Australia,
- Australia ‘fails in teacher evaluation’ in the Sydney Morning Herald
- Australia ‘fails in teacher evaluation’ on Channel 7 TV
The full Report is linked here.
Here in Victoria we went through a performance and development accreditation process which has been recently update. The individual performance review process is linked here. The process is about getting multiple data sets to inform and reflect upon your practice as a teacher.
The whole process is one about plotting future learning and development as a teacher – building instructional and professional capacity. Under performance should be related back to data on student learning.
I’m trying to reflect on my practices as a principal here. Over the past few years I divided the performance and development workload between the assistant principal and myself. We received varied feedback on mixed standard or expectations and so we conjointly did them.
Recently I received some further feedback from an outside parent consultant in the HR area that really one person cannot review more than 7-8 people effectively. Effectively meaning knowing the quality of performance having set individual goals aligned with school priorities, observed, provided feedback and discussed potential learning over a 12 month period.
I think this might call for a different implementation model to be discussed with staff. I welcome others feedback on this issue as the report is quite damming.