We just had our Evaluation remote visit last week and I’d like to share my reflection about how we handled the self-study and the visit itself.
Today, I’ll start with the Evaluation visit itself, as it is actually simpler to organize that it may seem.
In the document Remote evaluation visits guidelines on myIB, there is a sample agenda (Appendix A, p19-24) that can serve as a base to organize the visit. From there, you can pull up a list of meetings relevant to your school and arrange a schedule for the 2 or 3 days. The big idea is to organize meetings between the IB team and every stakeholder (member) of your school community.
I started making the visit agenda only after submitting the self-study questionnaire because I like to focus on one thing at the time, but that will depend on the size of your school and your ability to work on several tasks at the same time. It took about 6 weeks to have everything organized, but again, that will depend on the flexibility of your school’s stakeholders.
Just don’t wait to know the IB team to start, as this can be confirmed pretty late (sometimes only 2 weeks before the actual visit) and because the team will be happy to have at least a draft agenda to work on as soon as the team is confirmed.
One thing that I would recommend when making the agenda is to organize the class visits before the meetings with teachers, so that the IB team have an idea of what is happening in the class and can discuss about what they saw and ask specific questions about the teacher’ intentions. Our IB visiting team and the teachers explicitly told me that it was very helpful to do so.
If possible, have the teachers send you a basic lesson plan of the day to share with the IB team for them to know what central idea and lines of inquiry the class is working on, what skills they are focusing on, and what are the teachers’ intentions for the learning experience the IB team will see.
To schedule the agenda smoothly, I would recommend to ask their availability to the governing body (chairman, directors, etc.) and parents first, as they usually have less flexibility than others. Then I would fit the teachers according to their shift or classes and try to have the pedagogical leadership team (PLT - head of school, principal, vice-principal, head teachers, PYP coordinator, etc.) do their best to take the last available spots. But know that everybody will have to be flexible to some extent.
Some resource:
Here is a list of the meetings to organize:
Introduction of the visiting team (or video before the visit)
Meeting with principal/head of school
Meeting with programme coordinator
Meeting with group responsible for Standard A and B of the self-study questionnaire
Meeting with group responsible for Standard C of the self-study questionnaire
Meeting with governing body
Meeting with the vice-principal
Visit to classes (each class)
Meeting with teachers (each class)
Meeting with single-subject teachers
Meeting with students (1-2 student per grade)
Meeting with parents (1-2 parent per grade)
Meeting with the librarian
Tour of school facilities
Exit meeting
Meeting with the PYP coordinator (pre-exit meeting)
Exit meeting with principal/head of school and programme coordinator
Here is list of sample questions that was shared on the FB group PYP coordinators that can help you have an idea of what might be discussed during the meetings.
However, I wouldn’t focus on practicing sample questions, as the questions from the IB team will really depend on the documents and evidence you provided in the self-study questionnaire. They will be looking for information they need to confirm or information that was not in there, so there are unlimited possibilities of questions and topics of discussion. Most of the time, the questions practiced with teachers are not even mentioned!
However, I also understand that teachers will feel relieved to have these sample questions, so do share with them but make sure teachers understand these are just sample questions and that you are sharing for them to have an idea of what their meeting with the IB will look like.
Finally, here is a document I made to explain this to the teachers, letting them know that the Evaluation was not a test and a comment about the meeting with the IB team. I used some comments I had on facebook to make this document.
In another post, I will talk about how we handled the self-study after that first big meeting in July 2020 and share my reflection on how I would handle the next self-study in 5 years!
Keep reading this blog to find other resources and information.
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