Step 5

Three aspects of the Standard focus explicitly on monitoring and evaluation:

Indicator 4.3: focuses on how leaders adopt a developmental approach to M&E, at Silver level how effectively it is increasingly devolved to teams, and at Gold level how it becomes the responsibility of the individual.Check advice about this in the School Development Guide.

Indicator 5.4: focuses on monitoring classroom practice in terms of monitoring of, for, and as development, which is progressively devolved over the phases.Check advice about this in the School Development Guide

Principle 12: focuses on how the school understands itself and monitors itself as a learning organisation.Check advice for this principle in the School Development Guide.

Back to Step 5

The Deep Audit Tool can be used to:

Achieve a measure of where the school is in its Learning Quality Framework development – you have already met it in Step 3 of this guide;
Monitor ongoing progress and check progress towards the desired level of practice;
Provide evidence to support self-certification and/or in advance of external verification.

The deep audit tool provides a searching analysis of the school’s practice against the 32 indicators of the LQF. At each phase of development the indicator is broken down into three and frequently four component parts.

Navigating the audit tool:

For detailed instructions on how to use the Deep Audit Tool, go back to Step 3.3 of this guide. For convenience, the download buttons for the Deep Audit Tool are also included at the end of this section.

Undertaking an audit:

Decide who should be involved. We suggest 4-5 people, one of whom should be the person taking the in-school LQF lead. It would be wise to include the head teacher at this stage also. May take 3-4 hours to complete.
Make a copy of all of the recording/scoring sheets and the summary sheet, and date them
Work through the 32 indicators in order, answering yes/no to each of the statements – refer to page 33 if necessary;
Transfer your scores on to the Audit Summary sheet, page 45.

Interpreting the Audit Summary sheet:

A completed Audit Summary gives a quick visual picture of the school’s readiness for accreditation.
Use it to check that the school is ready for accreditation at the school’s desired level.
The boxes that are ‘grey’ are considered to be essential if a particular level is to be considered secure
To be considered secure at Bronze level, the school needs to have scored ‘3’ or higher in at least 29 of the LQF indicators, and not scored less than 3 in any of the essential ‘grey’ indicators at Bronze level
To be considered secure at Silver level, the school needs to have scored ‘5’ or higher in at least 29 of the LQF indicators, and not scored less than 5 in any of the essential ‘grey’ indicators at Silver level
To be considered secure at Gold level, the school needs to have scored ‘7’ in at least 29 of the LQF indicators, and not scored less than 7 in any of the essential ‘grey’ indicators at Gold level.

Big decision

Having completed the audit you have a big decision to make. Do we feel that we have sufficient evidence of secure practice to proceed to accreditation, or are there still some indicators that are in need of further attention?

Preparing for Verification:

Complete a thorough audit as outlined above;
Check that your audit summary is consistent with the level of verification you are seeking;
If so, begin to populate the Level Review Chart for your chosen level of verification (see ahead to Step 6.3 for this).
When you feel ready for verification, contact TLO to initiate the verification process.
[Step 6 of this guide will take you through the verification processes in detail.]

To download a copy of the Full Audit Tool, open up and print these 5 files. The first 3 are write-protected, but the last two can be copied and edited if you wish.

Experience suggests that printing a hard copy of the audit tool for each person taking part in the audit is essential.

[If you want to produce a backed master copy: do not back sheet 1a; put sheet 2a upside down on the back of 1b; 3a upside down on the back of 2b etc etc; then comb bind along the long edges]

Download a copy of Audit Tool pages 1a to 32a Download a copy of Audit Tool pages 1b to 32b Download a copy of Audit scoring rules p33 Download a copy of the Audit scoring sheets pages 34 to 44 Download a copy of Audit score summary sheet, page 45

Step 5.5 Bronze Level Surveys

Step 5.5 Silver Level Survey

Step 5.5 Gold Level Survey

Step 5.2 Check the M&E aspects of the Learning Quality Standard