Departmental reviews
Unlock your department's potential with targeted reviews, actionable insights, and expert support to boost student outcomes and teaching quality
In times of rapid curriculum and pedagogy changes, it is crucial that leaders deeply understand how things work within their schools or kura. This understanding allows you to make informed decisions about the best direction for your departments, ensuring that improvements are targeted and effective.
Elevate your department's performance
Our departmental reviews provide in-depth insights and actionable recommendations to help your school departments reach their full potential. We can work with a single department or take a systematic approach to review all departments across your school or kura. Whether it's enhancing teaching quality, improving curriculum alignment, or boosting student outcomes, our reviews are designed to support department leaders in making informed and impactful changes.
Why conduct departmental reviews?
Objective evaluation: Gain an independent perspective on your department’s strengths and areas for development. Our reviewers bring an external lens, highlighting both successes and opportunities for growth.
Tailored recommendations: We work closely with your department to create customised recommendations that align with your school’s strategic goals and needs.
Enhance teaching and learning: Identify areas to improve teaching practices, curriculum delivery, and student engagement, leading to improved student outcomes.
Support department leadership: Empower your department leaders with the insights and tools they need to lead effectively, make strategic improvements, and foster a culture of collaboration.
What to expect
Our review methodology is designed to gather reliable and comprehensive data to understand how your department is progressing towards its goals. We use a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative data from online surveys and student achievement data, along with qualitative insights from classroom observations, interviews, and focus groups.
Initial meetings: We begin with meetings to ensure all staff are clear about the review process. This includes meetings with department leadership to co-construct the specific focus areas for the review, and an introductory meeting with the entire department to address any questions.
Comprehensive analysis: Our experienced reviewers conduct a detailed analysis of department data, including student achievement, teaching practices, and curriculum alignment.
Data gathering: Data is gathered through a range of activities, including online surveys for teachers and students, classroom observations, and practice analysis conversations. These methods help us collect valid and reliable information to form a well-rounded view of the department.
Interviews and observations: We gather insights through interviews with department members, classroom observations, focus groups with teachers and students, and practice analysis discussions, ensuring a thorough view of departmental operations.
Sensemaking session: We hold a collaborative session where the initial findings are shared, allowing department staff to provide further insights and evidence, and to contribute to refining the conclusions.
Actionable report: Receive a clear, actionable report that includes key findings, strengths, and tailored recommendations to help your department thrive.
Follow-up support: Following the review, our team is available to support your department in implementing the recommendations, providing coaching, and helping track progress.
Who should engage in departmental reviews?
Heads of department, school leaders, and senior leadership teams looking to drive improvement, enhance teaching quality, and align departmental goals with the wider school strategy. If your department is seeking a fresh perspective and targeted support to elevate student outcomes, a departmental review is an effective step forward.
Benefits of departmental reviews
Move from hunches to insight: Leaders will move away from working off hunches, to deeply knowing what is happening in their school or kura.
Co-constructed process: We co-construct the reviews with you, ensuring that schools and kura are in the driving seat throughout the entire process.
Expert insights: Our expert evaluators bring valuable perspectives from a range of different school settings, enriching the review with diverse insights.
Impartial rigour: Having an impartial expert working with your school or kura adds rigour and objectivity that is hard to achieve when you're so close to the lived experience in your school or kura.
Departmental agency: While you can take a school- or kura-wide approach, individual departments can set their own additional foci, giving them agency and supporting them in building their evaluative capability.
Targeted improvement: Gain clarity on where to focus your efforts for the most significant impact on student outcomes.
Professional growth: Foster professional development for teachers and department leaders through constructive feedback and ongoing support.
Strategic alignment: Ensure that departmental goals and practices are aligned with the overall vision and strategic direction of the school.
Boosted morale and collaboration: A transparent review process helps build trust, encourages open dialogue, and fosters a collaborative approach to tackling challenges.
