The DigiEssa4Schools school self-assessment instrument was tested in six countries where all the project partners are from. A symposium has been organised in each partner country in which the results of the project and in particular of the test will be discussed.
The Dutch symposium took place on 18 December 2024. Ten education experts participated in this symposium. Advisors, assessors, primary and secondary school leaders, university staff, policy officers – all with many years of experience in working in and with schools.
For each participant, a ‘hard copy’ of the preliminary ‘Implementation Manual for the DigiEssa4Schools Model’ and the article ‘Planning School Improvement’ was available. After a presentation of ambitions and developments over the past two years, the opportunities and obstacles to a possible large-scale application in the Netherlands were discussed. Below are some conclusions from that conversation:
- The presented instrument is well tailored to information that is relevant to a school that wants to start a school improvement project. As such, it also fits in well with the PDCA cycle that underlies their quality strategies in many schools.
- The instrument covers ten policy areas, with a set of multiple-choice questions for each policy area. The freedom it gives schools to decide which area(s) are relevant to them is a significant plus.
- There is probably a lot of overlap with the instruments that are operational in many schools such as WMK, Magister, Parnassys.
In the course of 2025, the results of the DigiEssa4Schools project will become available in all six countries.
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