School Plan

Analysis
Dimensions of Educational
Leadership – EEA 535

Shelly Sharma

December 2017
 Shelly Sharma
EEA 535
December 2017
A school plan is an essential document for all parties involved within the educational system.

In the handbook for School Improvement Planning put forth by the Education Improvement

Commissions in Ontario, a school plan is:

Is a road map that sets out the changes a school needs to make to improve the level

of student achievement, and shows how and when these changes will be made. A

school improvement plan is also a mechanism through which the public can hold

schools accountable for student success and through which it can measure

improvement (p.6)

In the Surrey School District, school plans are a work in progress. Having only been implemented

in 2016, the district is committed to developing inquiry focused school plans in all schools. The

motivation for these plans to be inquiry driven is based on the rationale that they:

• Engage teachers in meaningful conversations about evidence-based teaching practices

that lead to improved student learning and engagement

• Improve student learning in areas that are foundational to student success

• View school planning in a more holistic way by incorporating the district priority

practices as a key aspect of school development

• Ensure that students are developing core competencies as mandated by the Ministry of

Education (Surrey School District, n.d.)

The way in which the district outlines this inquiry process to develop school plans is by having

three big sections with essential questions under each section as follows:

1. Analysis of Context

a. What do we know about our learners?

b. What evidence supports what we know about your learners?

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2. Focus & Planning

a. What focus emerges as a question to purse?

b. What professional learning do we need?

c. What is our plan?

3. Reflect, Adjust & Celebrate

a. How will we know our plan is making a difference (evidence/success criteria)?

b. Based on the evidence does our inquiry require adjustment? (Surrey School

District, n.d.)

Within the Surrey School District, the Superintendent and Staff are responsible for working

together to develop a strategic plan. This strategic plan then must coincide with the districts vision

(learning by design) for learning and must be approved by the Board of Education. When it is

approved this plan then becomes the guide for all staff in carrying out the short and long-term

goals of the district.

Surrey School District’s learning by design vision is developed by senior district staff and

educational partners to support a culture of:

• Inquiry

• Innovation

• Collaboration

• Creativity

• Critical thinking

• Risk taking

• Leadership

(Surrey School District, n.d.)

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This culture can be summed into the following statement: “We prepare our leaners to think

creatively, critically, communicate skillfully and demonstrate care for self and others (Surrey

School District, n.d.)”. The learning for design concept has three core parts – learning, structures

and tools that support innovation in Surrey Schools. The district also uses priority practices that

focus on curriculum design, quality assessment, instructional strategies and social/emotional

learning (Surrey School District, n.d.). The learning by design vision, strategic plan along with the

districts priority practices help in influencing each schools school plan and support ongoing

professional learning in each of the schools.

The core of a school plan is about how to best meet the needs of our students. Figure 1 in

the appendix, outlines a timeline put forth by the Surrey School District as to when each of the

stages of the planning process should be completed within the year.

No school plan can be complete without knowing who it is geared towards, in the educational

system it is geared towards our students. At Queen Elizabeth Secondary (Q.E.) the three sections

of the school plan are addressed by each department individually. However, because these

questions are addressed departmentally and not collaboratively, the plan is set to be made a lengthy

and incomplete document that does not serve the purpose of a school plan.

Q.E. is classified as a Level 2 inner – city school. This classification is determined by the

district business development office who specifically pulls data from Statistics Canada to

determine this designation (Mike Jellema, Q.E.).

Sam Fillipoff also recognizes inner-city school and their importance by stating that:

Inner-city schools are special places. They are the places where the most vulnerable

children in our society receive their education. There is little doubt that poverty is

the most telling indicator of need for the children who attend these schools. In

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December 2017
addition to poverty are factors such as crime, hunger…English as a second

language, delayed language development, social and cultural barriers… and other

special needs. (Inner City Schools, March 2001)

Located across the Surrey Memorial Hospital and a few blocks up from Surrey’s equivalent

of the Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, a lot of students attending Q.E. come from households

that struggle to provide for them. However, if you head a few blocks South, up King George

Boulevard towards White Rock there resides a totally different demographic. At Q.E., we have

students who drive to school in nice fancy cars and some students whose families struggle to even

have enough food to eat. As Zach Hutchinson, our Humanities department head at Q.E. put it our

demographic at the school consists of “a very multicultural population, but still majority Indian

descent. Socio-economically we range from very well off to living on the streets”. The socio-

economic range amongst our students then also impacts their learning.

Figure 2 in the appendix outlines the enrollment numbers at Q.E. for the 2016/17 school

year. Figure 3 further breaks down the data for our special needs students at Q.E.

An important ministry document that has recently come into effect is the Enhanced

Framework for Student Learning. This framework is the foundation for the Education System in

British Columbia. It is meant to align government, districts, and school policies. It is also in place

to inform all parties involved with the educational system about what is happening. Essentially it

is there to develop transparency, transparency of information. The framework has five key

elements:

1. System Wide Focus

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December 2017
• This relates directly to the school plan – an essential document to ensure

that our students are at the foundation of all our decisions.

2. Meaningful and effective Planning for Continuous Improvement

• This section of the framework is to remind us that things change, and

our school plans need to reflect those changes, hence continual

improvements in the plans. Whilst keeping in mind the specific groups

of children in care, Aboriginal students and special needs students and

the continuous needs of these groups of students.

3. Effective Communication of Evidence

• This piece relates to the transparency of information – ensuring that

everyone involved knows what is happening, why it is happening and

how it will happen.

4. System-Wide Capacity Building

• Helps to ensure enough support is provided for goals to be achieved.

5. Linkages with Existing Local Agreements

• Ensures that all groups are acknowledged and well supported in their

learning within the school system.

(BC Ministry of Education – Framework for Enhanced Learning, n.d.)

At the District Level school plans are used to help achieve results that speak beyond the

school itself. Especially for a district like Surrey that has the highest enrollment rate in the province

and its enrollment is expected to increase by 6,175 students over the next 10 years (Ministry of

Education, n.d.).

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In Surrey the graduation rate for students of Aboriginal decent is lower than that of students with

special needs. Hence why Aboriginal student learning is a big focus in the district and even in the

province. The vision for Aboriginal leaners in the Surrey School District as mandated by the

Aboriginal Education Enhancement agreement is “to have every Aboriginal learner graduate with

dignity, purpose and options”. The goals of this agreement include:

• Increase positive identify and sense of belonging for all aboriginal learners;

• Increase knowledge and understanding of Aboriginal history, traditions and

cultures for all learners;

• Increase achievement for all aboriginal leaners.

At Q.E., 5% of our students are of Aboriginal decent and because their graduation rates are masked

it is difficult to say how many of them successfully graduate from high school. When looking at

goal number two of the Enhancement agreement, and the satisfaction survey from the year 2015/16

only 50% of the staff who completed the survey said that they are satisfied with the school’s effort

to teach students about Aboriginal people in Canada. To further this even more, only 61% of Grade

10’s and 23% of Grade 12’s said that they are being taught about Aboriginal history, traditions and

culture. The focus on Aboriginal Education and students is a big part of our district, school and

classroom goals. The school plan should focus on ways in which this subset of the student

population can be supported because it is at the end of the day an “education system that assists in

the development of human potential and improves the well-being of British-Columbian” (Ministry

of Education, n.d.). The Ministry of Education also states that “the school system develops

educated citizens by supporting each student intellectual, human and social, and career

development and by considering a wide range of information in all of these areas (n.d.)” but is this

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December 2017
really the case when our graduation rates and satisfaction surveys speak to differ when it comes to

Aboriginal students and education.

Students with a special needs designation receive more support and as a result their

graduation rates are higher because they can graduate with a modified graduation certificate. “A

British Columbia School Completion Certificate or “Evergreen” is awarded to a student with

special needs who has an Individual Education Plan and who meets the goals of their educational

program other than graduation (Ministry of Education)”. At Q.E., 12% of our students are

designated as special needs, the graduation rate for these students is 60%. However, this percentage

does not designate whether or not they are graduating on the Evergreen program or a Dogwood

certificate.

Children in care… This group of students is probably one of the most important groups in

a building. Unfortunately, no one in at Q.E. was able to provide me with the number of students

that fall under this category. This in itself raised a lot of red flags as a teacher at Q.E. When

undertaking the creation of a school plan these groups of students come up in discussion and what

their needs are, so that fact that this number wasn’t provided astonishes me and scares me a little

bit, because these students are often quite vulnerable.

Now, one may ask why is it important to know about these subsets of student groups, well

at the district level these groups require financial resource or funding as we like to call it in the

education system. These students drive large amounts of funding that are put into these schools

and help in driving the districts decisions. They are also groups that receive additional support to

be successful in their learning.

At the school level, the school plan can help the staff in motivating members of the school

community to help make the school a better place for its students. The Standards for Principals

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December 2017
and Vice-Principals in British Columbia, outlines the administrations role clearly in what is

expected as leaders of the school. Standard one of the Leadership Standards states that “principals

and vice-principals guide the development and implementation of shared values, vision, mission

and goals to support student learning and achievement for all students (Leadership Standards for

Principals and Vice-Principals, n.d.)” – the school plan does exactly that, except it extends out to

everyone in the building not just administration. Each standard within the leadership standards

document holds the administration responsible for helping create a school in which amazing things

can happen. The school plan should merely be the start to creating those things, a go to in which

we are reminded of why we want to be amazing, amazing for our students! At Q.E. we measure

success by looking at graduation rates, but what about all the other success that our school should

be celebrating? To measure the success of a school we need to look at more than just graduation

rates. We can look at things like career development, what are our students doing after they

graduate? We can make it a regular process to have student engagement surveys. In Surrey the

success of Aboriginal learners is measured through satisfaction surveys that students complete, but

wonder if all students in our schools completed similar satisfaction surveys on a regular basis.

These surveys could then provide real time results that could help us (teachers, administration,

students, parents, district level staff) be more aware of what is happening in our building and things

that we need to improve upon or celebrate. Another indicator that could be measured at the school

level could be the various outside classroom programs offered for students to part take in. For

example, athletics, if students are staying after school to be a part of the school team they want to

be a part of the school community, they want to celebrate their success and build upon their talent.

This is an indicator of success – yet why isn’t its measured?

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EEA 535
December 2017
At Q.E. like many other schools, the teacher ultimately determines how student success is

measured. Some teachers use for example base their student success on their grade, while others

like myself use informal interviews to and observations to measure student engagement and that

is a success indicator in my classes. Ultimately with the new curriculum we are measuring more

than just academics as student success indicators. The core competencies of communication,

thinking, and personal and social, in the new curriculum are designed to focus on the holistic

student, because all of our students are different. Each and every one of them has their own

strengths and weakness and to focus solely on their written and numerical output is unfair. For life

after graduation students become members of our society and in society the ability to communicate

with others is essential as well as the ability to think creatively and critically. Students after they

graduate also become members of our society and community and they need to become aware of

their actions and their choices impact those around them. The school plan could also help in

creating consistency amongst assessment methods as well.

The purpose of a school plan is to have direction and common goals that the school can

work towards. At QE the school plan is the opposite of that. Having a document that is not even

accessible to all staff is the first problem. When the plan is not published or easily accessible it

then becomes obsolete and hard to act upon. The plan should also be student centred rather than

department centered. The plan should focus on the three big sections as a school, departments

should come together to focus on our students. For example, the first question is – what do we

know about our learners? We as a school at Q.E., know that our learners (students) come from

various different backgrounds. Whether we talk about family income status, cultural backgrounds

or even different interest and learning styles. These commonalties should be acknowledged so that

we can best meet the needs of our students.

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 Shelly Sharma
EEA 535
December 2017
The school plan ca be an impactful document if used in the right context. A document that

incorporates all parties involved in the educational system from board office officials, district

personnel, administration, staff members, students and parents. It’s a document that should be

published and easily accessible. The Enhanced Framework for Learning states these “plans will

be public reports to and for their local community (n.d.)” because these plans are a means for

providing evidence that is meaningful and aligns with the districts principles for learning to ensure

that the focus of our practices are our students, the learners.

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EEA 535
December 2017
Figure 1
Evidence
Gathering
• September
• October
Adjusting
Evidence
Based on
Analysis
Evidence
• November
• May
• December
• June

Refelecting Evidence
on Evidence Reporting
• March • January
• April • February

Figure 2

Non-Residents Aborginal Students

5 students 62 students
0.4% of student population 5% of student population

Queen Elizabeth
Secondary
School Statistcs 2016/2017
Number of Students: 1,237

Special Needs Students English Language Learners (ELL)

147 students 89 students
12% of student population 7.2% of student population

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EEA 535
December 2017

Figure 3
•1 student
B - Deafblind •0.1 % of student population

C- Moderate to Profound Intellectural •10 students

Disablity •0.8% of student population

D - Physical Disablity/Chornic Health •20 students

Impairment •1.6% of student population

•14 students
F - Deaf or Hard of Hearing •1.1% of student population

•13 students
G - Austism Spectrum Disorder •1.1% of student population

H - Intensive Behaviour/Severe Mental •13 students

Illness •1.1% of student population

•7 students
K - Mild Intellectual Disability •0.6% of student population

•2 students
P - Gifted •0.2% of student population

•48 students
Q - Learning Disablity •3.9% of student population

R - Moderate Behaviour •17 students

Support/Mental Illness •1.4% of student population

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December 2017
References

2017 School District Report - SD 36 Surrey [PDF]. (n.d.).

S. (n.d.). ABORIGINAL EDUCATION ENHANCEMENT AGREEMENT [PDF]. Surrey.

Cooke, D., Cameron, P., Moseley-Williams, B., Vanstone, A., Lessard, R., & Wright, A. (2000,
November). Education Improvement Commission - School Improvement Planning A
Handbook [PDF]. Toronto: Education Improvement Commission.

Education, M. O. (2017, April 06). Framework for Enhancing Student Learning. Retrieved
December 08, 2017, from https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/education-
training/administration/kindergarten-to-grade-12/enhancing-student-learning

Fillipoff, S. (2001, March 5). Teacher newsmagazine. Retrieved December 08, 2017, from
https://bctf.ca/publications/NewsmagArticle.aspx?id=12040

Hutchinson, Z. (2017, November 27). School Plan [E-mail interview].

Jellema, M. (2017, November 29). School Plan Interview [Personal interview].

Leadership Standards for Principals and Vice-Principals in British Columbia 2016[PDF]. (2016,
June). BCPVPA Standards Committee.

Learning by Design - Our Vision for Learning. (n.d.). Retrieved December 08, 2017, from
https://surreylearningbydesign.ca/learning-by-design/

School Planning as an Inquiry Process. (n.d.). Retrieved December 08, 2017, from
https://surreylearningbydesign.ca/school-plans/

Student Statistics - 2016/17 03636022 - Queen Elizabeth Secondary [PDF]. (n.d.).

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