Consider evaluation from the beginning
You might think of evaluation as something that comes at the end of a process or cycle – e.g. reviewing one of your school's development plans at the end of each academic year.
However, to make it effective, you should already be thinking about evaluation at the very start, during the planning phase, and keep thinking about it throughout the whole process.
Know what you want your evaluation to tell you
At the planning stage, be clear about:
- The questions you want your evaluation to answer
- What data you need and how it'll help you answer those questions (see below for more about collecting data)
Once you’ve figured these points out, you can be more confident that your evaluation will tell you if you made progress in the way you planned.
“Before designing a system I’d ask yourself