Overview

The Russley School board of trustees invited an external facilitator to take them through the board tool. Colin Gray describes what happened and explains how the board sees its role in the self-review process.

Transcript

Board chair, Colin Gray, talks about using the Tool for Board of Trustees

Russley School’s board of trustees have been taken through the self review tool for boards by an external facilitator. Board chair Colin Gray explains why and what happened.

We had a chair meeting with senior staff, principal and board members and we invited a facilitator to that meeting, we’ve recognised national standards and implementation as one of the key issues going forward for us as a school particularly for the board so the session was really about up-skilling the board a little and what was actually going on with national standards. Getting a little more knowledge and as well the facilitator was taking us through the tool in terms of the boards and specific areas we need to be looking at going forward so as a board we’re doing our job and we’re assisting the principal, senior staff to implement the national standards, so that we’re doing the best we can.

I think one of the things in terms of the continuum that’s set out in the tool is getting a feeling of where we are as a school, what we’re doing right, how far down the path we are and that was a little bit illuminating a little bit challenging as well in terms of I think we’ve ticked ourselves off in the basic column for quite a few of the questions that were asked there. Having said that we feel we’ve made a start, we’ve done a lot of work on assessment already over the last 18 months which I think stands us in pretty good stead in terms of going forward and how it’s a question of modifying that for standards.

Russley school is already well down the track in terms of reporting to parents and whanau.

We’ve done a lot in terms of the standards of our reports, formats of our reports already which I think gives us a starting point once again it’s further work to make sure we’re meeting our obligations under the national administrations guidelines in terms of how they outline what we need to be doing, in relation to the standards, there’s certainly work to be done there. One of the things I think that the tool does it points us in the right direction as to what type of reporting we need to be doing, what data we need to have gathered in behind there and then just how we communicate with our community. They’re probably to the two major areas that will really focus us initially. After that I think it’s the next thing about what we do on an ongoing basis with the starter as we’re gathering it, as I read the tool it’s really coming down to moving from the basic, further along that continuum so that ultimately we as a board are using the data that’s gathered as a management tool as a strategic planning tool in the school so that’ll be the challenge for the board.

The tool gives us a little bit of a framework in that, by breaking it down into different components and asking different questions and saying well this is what we should be aiming to do I think that gives us better information as board members and guidelines to start asking the right questions. Without that we’re at a bit of a loose end we’ve only heard what everyone else has heard in the media, or started to read the material that’s coming through so we’re at a little bit of a disadvantage without that sort of guidance so I think we’ve got a confidence level now that most of us have been on for a few years. I think the tool gives us a little bit more of a guidance about some of the things we should be asking or similar strategic questions that we should be trying to drill down to a lot of that though I think is a confidence in the relationship between the principal, the senior staff and the board, the better that relationship the more likely you are to be able to drill down to those sorts of questions and get assurance about what you’re doing is right.