Measuring a school’s progress and impact continues to be a difficult task for many principals taking part in our strategic leadership programmes. Deciding what to measure, how to do that, and the best way of reporting on it all depends on your unique school, community, team and of course your strategic plan.
Balanced Scorecard for Schools Aotearoa (BSSA) is a pilot initiative from Springboard Trust designed to tackle these challenges head-on.
Expressions of Interest now open here for Balanced Scorecard for Schools
Next wave: August-November 2022
Based on Kaplan & Norton’s framework, BSSA helps schools understand their goals and begin developing a measurement framework that is unique to their school and strategic plan, and that presents your impacts and progress in a way that is clear to all stakeholders.
“This is a completely new way of thinking – it has connected and aligned our leadership team and given them a wider appreciation of the strategic priorities of our school”
Balanced Scorecard for Schools Aotearoa: Learning Objectives and Outcomes
The Balanced Scorecard for Schools Aotearoa (BSSA) programme aims to:
Improve the way in which a kura/school understands its overall performance, better enabling it to achieve its vision through effective understanding and action
Develop evidence the relationships between inputs, outcomes and impact
Tell the story of the kura/school, incorporating Māori storytelling elements where applicable
Use traditional forms of measurement and ways of knowing
By the end of this programme, participants will:
Understand the principles, features and benefits of BSSA for use in their school
Be able to clearly articulate BSSA objectives and measures relevant to the school’s context.
Confidently tell the school’s story and explain the data clearly to key stakeholders.
Have developed a balanced scorecard that is unique to their school’s context
Be ready to lead the adoption and use of the BSSA within their school
Be able to apply information from the BSSA into wise action that improves the performance of a school and supports student outcomes.
How Balanced Scorecard for Schools Aotearoa works
Through BSSA, principals will take their strategic plan and work with our team and cross-sector volunteers to identify, capture and utilise the most important information in your school – much of which already exists. Broadly speaking, it will focus on these areas:
Teaching and leadership. Your team’s abilities, skill sets, needs and capacity to grow, including whether they have the right support, current classroom practices and ongoing development.
School culture and community. In particular, the degree to which the school environment is a safe space for students, physically, socially and emotionally.
People, tools and resources. The adequacy of your facilities, personnel and curriculum and the degree to which the community supports these.
Academic learning. Students’ academic identities, progress, performance and readiness for further education. Together we will look at these areas, how they intersect with your strategic plan’s goals and initiatives and develop a clear theory and framework to measure and demonstrate your school’s progress.
This learning occurs over an orientation session and three main workshops, supported by multiple check-ins and debriefs with either your volunteer or the Springboard Trust team. In total, the programme should take 20-30 hours.
“Balanced Scorecard has identified gaps in practice between what the school says it values and the actual ability to measure this and demonstrate achievement”
