If I knew then what I knew now…. Reflections on the IB Evaluation

by Leanne Gibbons, Impington Village College, UK

Sometimes, it is so difficult to shift your perception of something, isn’t it? As an English teacher by trade, I get very entrenched in the nuances of language and semantics- and the word ‘evaluation’ is interesting.  On face value ‘to evaluate’ simply means to take a view on the worth of something.  It has connotations of weighing ‘things’ up – of considering different perspectives (ooh, very IB!)- of looking at the bad and the good.  And yet, particularly in the UK, I feel the term has been hijacked by employment – it becomes enmeshed with notions of appraisal (again, an interesting word!), review and assessment.  There is something about it that has us educators feeling slightly clammy.  We can’t shake the feeling that we are going to be measured, and found wanting.  Ofsted looms in the wings like the ghost of Christmas yet to come, foretelling our doom.

So when the lovely IBO reshaped their whole approach to the evaluation process in order to be a critical partner – one who provides a service to the college, supporting their reflection and development…..it wasn’t exactly easy to accept this as truth.  I am not saying that the IBO was disingenuous at all (who am I to ever suggest the creators of the IB Learner Profile could be unprincipled!) It is just that the level of external scrutiny we teachers have been under since the dawn of Eve makes it really hard to accept that any evaluation will actually be supportive.

So, what was it actually like? 

Officially, the start of the evaluation process is engaging with the preliminary review materials.  Now, I can see how this could be seen to be quite a lengthy, onerous and somewhat bureaucratic process.  There are many documents that need to be uploaded.  These documents cover the entire process of running an IB programme – they span a framework of culture, learning, environment and purpose.   You have to look carefully at your policies, at the structure of your school, at your timetable, your curricula, your CPD, the strength of your core and the very fabric of the IB philosophy that runs from your mission statement through the values your staff, students and whole community up.  Taken as a step in a process, the preliminary review materials seem insurmountable.

But, the reality is, you are an IB world school.  It is in your very bones to understand the place and importance of reflection in all that you do.  This is not a step in a process. It is part of continuous good practice that sits at the heart of this. 

We decided years before the evaluation to use the process.  Since its last evaluation, as a school that has grown to include a three-year MYP, it seemed to us to make perfect sense to ensure that the preliminary view documentation became the cornerstone of our internal CPD programme.  Not only did this help with furthering the already strong culture of the IB within our college, but it also meant that we were, by its very nature, already ‘ticking the boxes’ of the IB requirements.  Our CPD was collaborative.  It was articulated both horizontally and vertically.  Members from multiple faculties and across the strata of UK teaching hierarchy came together, in working groups that we called ‘communities of learning’ to look at everything from revising policy to different ATL foci to further, and more meaningfully, integrating the core of both the DP and the CP into our curricula.  

Early positive impact

This worked wonders for our IBCP core as our CRS teachers fully became part of the interactions that already existed between DP teachers, they worked to further integrate the core into their BTEC overviews and vice versa.  The Core became much more meaningful for our students; Language Development fully connected to their career aspirations, and Service Learning supported their ambitions through challenging experiences.  This is not to say that it is too late if you have an upcoming evaluation if this is not how you have approached it in your setting.  It isn’t.  Context is king in the IB evaluation, and the visiting team is hugely mindful of the pressures that each and every school is under.  I can, however, promise you that engendering full community ‘buy-in’ is hugely beneficial to everything. If you can develop this culture in your setting, you are on to a winner.

Self-study not self criticism

The self-study, providing a narrative evaluation of your meeting of the IB standards and practices, ran alongside our gathering of the preliminary documentation and, I must say, was equally useful.  I am lucky in that I have a great team of like-minded people around me, but they are also very good at ironing out some of my more pessimistic streaks.  I am always going to be my worst critic – I am sure there are therapists worldwide who would have a field day – but this means that I will always be extraordinarily harsh in any form of self-evaluation – professional or otherwise!  Approaching the self-study collaboratively allowed me and my IBDPC to take a step back and see the truly excellent planning, practice, reflection and downright hard work the stakeholders in our community had undertaken.  It allowed us to see our development in the last five years,  the spaces we had to collaborate further, the areas where we needed to turn our attention to and the points of down-right celebration.  Again, use the self-study as a tool to bring your community together for the greater good and see it not as ‘another document’ but as a means of improvement.

Get your document ducks in a row

Once you get to the point of your having your document ducks in a row, you then have to face the practicalities of uploading it all to Concierge.  My observation here is, if you can do IBIS, you can do Concierge.  I think it is quite intuitive to anyone who has been through the delights of the IB upload process.  I would also argue it is a really good platform for being able to view the feedback on your material in a clear and methodical manner.   If you do have matters to be addressed (more on this little gem later) you can see instantly where they are and the feedback on how to address them is abundantly obvious (or at least was to us!)  At the preliminary review stage, we were in a position that our MTBA was one of logistics as the team couldn’t open three of the files we uploaded so there wasn’t too much sweating on my part to fix that.  But here is the thing, why is it that my stomach sank the minute I saw the little icon suggesting any MTBA at all?  The reality is, reader, that there really needn’t be this response.  The team are there to support, to guide and to be that critical partner to ensure you are moving in the right direction.  And, I must be honest, everything about the process for me supported this notion.

And, on reflection, this sense of support really was driven from the IB.  Our World School Manager held regular online sessions with UK schools who were heading toward evaluation to support in the understanding of the preliminary review, in breaking down what was required in the PDP, in exploring fully the nuances of what would be looked for in the self-evaluation document.  The advice and support he provided was excellent. Do reach out to your WSM at any point to support you in this way. 

Meeting and working with the team

Still, did all of this preparation and lovely support mean that I was a complete picture of calm serenity when it came to the initial online meeting with the team?  No. No, it did not. That ghost of Christmas yet to come was scratching at the window like Cathy on the heath (see, I am even mixing my literary references in panic!)  But, the problem was entirely mine. This whole process demonstrated a cultural shift for me and my entire team.  In truth, the initial meeting was fantastic opportunity for us to explain to three people from completely different educational backgrounds to us and to each other what our specific context was.  And, if there is one really important point I would make, it is to ensure that you are completely clear about your context.  A lot of the training of evaluation leads is around the need to be completely cognisant and understanding of the contexts in which the school being visited are delivering their IB Programmes.  It is no secret, for example, that many schools are struggling with budgetary constraints – both in the UK state and private sectors.  This, undoubtedly, will impact many delivery areas, not least in meeting the IB requirements of CPD.  These are things to have an open and honest conversation about.  The team are more likely to be able to support with plans for moving forward if they have a full understanding of the ground on which you are standing – and they can only do this if you have presented the landscape of the school or college fully.

So – you have worked your socks off to further build a real sense of IB-ness in your community.  You have discussed, collaborated, led and listened and built a folder of all of your preliminary documentation.  The visit itself has finally arrived.

And, to be honest, for me this was GREAT. My head of school may not completely agree (see above: Cathy Ofsted, the ghost of Christmas yet to come), but I thought the entire thing was incredibly supportive and useful.  The only complaint (and it is a minor grumbling on behalf of our teaching staff and students, who were really keen to show off their classes), was that they didn’t spend a huge amount of time in lessons.  But, I think that was because of the length of time they took to get to know and understand every strata of our community.  We had built our visit schedule around the framework and, consequently,  around our CPD model.  So, the communities of learners the evaluation team saw, had all fed into the different areas of our documentation and self-study.  These were the people best placed, we thought, to reflect on the progress we had made over the past five years and to provide insight into where we were going next. 

Looking to the future

It was lovely to see our community come together in this way- to have parents give feedback on their views and criticisms and to hear that our students were articulate, compassionate and reflective. 

Was it all sunshine and roses? Of course not!  There were things we weren’t expecting, that we hadn’t considered.  Our PDP was discussed in great depth, and consequent plans were established to provide a much greater challenge for us.  But, surely, this is the purpose of evaluation.  To assess, to appraise – to judge – for sure, but in a way that provides an opening for constant growth.  Being open-minded in our approach to the visit certainly helped me and the IBDPC see its value.  The team were compassionate in their approach, playing the role of a critical partner to a T.  Was the visit and the preparation for it exhausting?  Yes.  Was it worth this momentary exhaustion?  Absolutely!

Oh…and, to top off the academic year so far, we have just had our visit from Ofsted!  Although, actually a positive experience, it wasn’t one of learning.  The IB Evaluation and our next PDP have already got us fired up for the next stages of our IB journey.

Top tips for the evaluation:

• Concierge is your friend- get to know it
• Read the handbook
• Look at the InThinking guidance- it is invaluable
• USE THE TEMPLATES provided by the IB – it means you are always on the right track
• Use your IB Manager to seek support or clarification when needed
• Be clear on your context- what the team needs to know about your setting, your cohorts and the unique strengths and challenges they bring to delivering IB Programmes.