Principal's Message

School Review

You would hear the terms School Improvement Plan (SIP) and Annual Action Plan (AAP) many times over the course of the year. Each of these documents are very important in the development and growth of the College. The SIP is produced every 4 years after a period of reflection and review whilst the AAP is written each year in order to identify those goals and intended outcomes that are prioritised for the year. In 2021, Marian College is scheduled to undergo a whole school review and will be utilising the Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (MACS) model of review, the School Improvement Framework (SIF) Rubric Review. The SIF Rubric will be used to support deep learning and ongoing monitoring of improvement throughout the four-year cycle of the whole school improvement process. The SIF Rubric model of review supports schools to become more intentional in the alignment and coherence of all tools, resources and professional learning to support improvement in an ongoing and continuous way.

The process of school review will support measuring impact of improvement, as well as ensuring Marian College continue to meet external legislative and regulatory requirements. The review process has two dimensions:

Improvement: supports self-reflection and assessment of performance and growth in school improvement and informs planning for future growth. Post-review, schools will work closely with their Regional Learning Services team to set their future improvement agenda, grounded in the school’s next School Improvement Plan (SIP).

Compliance: an audit/verification process of the Minimum Standards for School Registration and other State and Commonwealth Requirements is conducted for all schools engaging in the process of school review.

The SIF Rubric is used by schools to engage in the process of self-reflection and self-assessment of current performance and to review progress of the previous School Improvement Plan (SIP). The school will engage with the entire SIF Rubric and pay particular attention to the collection and analysis of the quality of evidence and data for the identified system Core Capabilities. The SIF Rubric uses 5 spheres for review and assessment. They are:

Religious Dimension Sphere
Learning and Teaching Sphere
Leadership and Management Sphere
Student Wellbeing Sphere
School Community Sphere

Each sphere has a number of capabilities, each capability a number of indicators and in turn each indicator has 4 criterion. The College has to make a determination as to where we rate ourselves for each of the capabilities. An external reviewer will attend the school and over three days undertake a review process to validate our self-reflection using evidence and data that we provide as well as interviewing school community members. The reviewer returns later in the year to provide the School Leadership Team with a report and recommendations that will be used to develop the School Improvement Plan 2021-2024.

The dates for the Marian School Review are:

Tuesday 13 July Preliminary visit (1 day): Introduction of school reviewer, principal and/or leadership team, school visitation, data and evidence collection, compliance verification process and review preparation discussion.

Tuesday 27 July & Wednesday 28 July Review week — day 1 and 2: SIF Rubric 2.0 validation — reviewer engagement with members of the school community, using the SIF Rubric and a range of evidence and school documentation (qualitative and quantitative) to establish clear improvement directions for the school.

Friday 27 August Dialogue and engagement session: Engage with school reviewer observations, insights and recommendations, used to inform future planning and priorities for next four years, forming the basis of the School Improvement Plan (SIP).

The whole school community, students, staff and families, have the opportunity to participate in the Review process and we will be requesting parents and guardians to give of their time to offer their views for the future direction of the College.

Raymond Pisani

Principal