Core & More for Schools

School Improvement Practices

School improvement policies and practices are essential in establishing the conditions required for innovative and flexible education programs that support student achievement according to individual needs and social and technological change. OECD evidence emphasises that effective school leaders are those who can make evidence-informed decisions, provide the instructional leadership that teachers need to help all their students to succeed in school, and create a collaborative school environment in which teachers take part in school decision making (Schleicher, 2015). For this, school leaders need support.

Efficient and Effective

Just as we need to prioritize our curricular programs to ensure manageability and maximum impact, ensuring that the actions we take at a school level are both efficient and effective is essential. Incorporating guidelines and standards from leading school evaluation organizations and applying the 80/20 Pareto Principle, Core & More for Schools can help.

In seven key areas of school leadership, Core Actions have been defined. When these actions are put into motion, they function as ‘detonators’ simultaneously and concurrently activating other necessary processes. A demonstration of the chart view for Learning and Foundational Statements can be found here:

School Self-Evaluation

As well as the chart views which are provided, school leaders can self-evaluate their programs using the Core & More Schools Rubric to identify which ‘detonators’ might be needed to enable effective and efficient improvement. Suggestions are provided to support the self-evaluation process as well as suggested steps toward developing an iterative and prioritized action plan.

For more information about this, and to access the Core & More Actions for the six other Domains, please send a request here.

Schleicher, A. (2015), Schools for 21st-Century Learners: Strong Leaders, Confident Teachers, Innovative Approaches, International Summit on the Teaching Profession, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264231191-en.