School partnerships self-audit tool
How do you gather and analyse information about your school’s community to gain an understanding of different strengths and gaps that need to be filled?
When gathering information what sources of evidence do you use:
- existing school data?
- information from students, parents, teachers, and school leaders?
- information from your wider school community?
Think about the whole picture. How can you consider the quality of all community–school interactions:
What information already exists?
What are your current school policies and practices for:
- designing and reviewing your school curriculum to best meet the needs of your students and community
- designing and reviewing your school curriculum to be inclusive?
- designing and reviewing your school curriculum to be culturally relevant?
- finding out what your parents, whānau, and community want from the school and how they would like to work together?
- enrolling students?
- making contact with parents and whānau, sharing information with them, and entering into an ongoing discussion about school issues in general and their child’s learning in particular?
- seeking to align home and school learning practices?
- empowering parents and whānau to support their children’s learning?
- holding parent–teacher meetings?
- reporting to parents and whānau on students’ progress?
- fundraising and volunteering activities involving parents, whānau, and community?
- accessing resources or information from parents and the community?
- working together to create a new resource or system?
Has this review surfaced any particular issues? This may provide a starting point for further inquiry.
This section provides questions adapted for students, parents, teachers and leaders to explore different voices and perspectives:
Gathering new information
Questions for students
Questions for parents and whānau
Questions for teachers
Questions for school leaders
Please select only the questions that are relevant and reword them as necessary.
As you select questions, ask yourselves:
- Do we want to ask this question – is it especially relevant?
- How shall we word it to make it clear to this particular group of students/adults (particularly if there are language or cultural differences)?
- Should we ask the question orally or in writing?
- Do we need to have it interpreted or translated?
These questions could be explored in a face-to-face a meeting, in written form, or online.
You may prefer to use or adapt one of the following resources:
Alternative self-review resources
- ERO report Partners in Learning (May 2008), has self-review questions in the self-review section.
- Minneapolis Public Schools Positive School Climate Kit , includes ideas and tools to help schools identify and address issues around “cultural competence and equity” and “family and community involvement” within the school community that can be adapted to the New Zealand context.
- “Culture Audit ”: A Leadership Tool for Assessment and Strategic Planning in Diverse Schools and Colleges, a module by R. M. Bustamante (2007) provides generic ideas to help educational leaders conduct a culture audit, focusing on specific domains that affect their organisation. It includes a School-wide Cultural Competence Observation Checklist (Bustamante and Nelson, 2005).
- Parent Engagement and Career Development (PowerPoint 311 kB) Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Department of Education, includes a summary of international research into family, school, and community partnerships.
Published on: 16 Aug 2011