Vision, values and ethos

• What is compelling you to make change?
• What are the risks associated with change?
• What are risks associated with maintaining the status quo (i.e. making no change/doing nothing)?
• What vision and values currently underpin the work of the school?
• How will you need to extend/develop these to incorporate work with refugee families?
• Vision and values questions – what are the risks of not doing it?
• What time and capacity do you currently have?
• Will you need to create time and resources to help develop your work in this area?

Teacher Development

• What skills do your teachers and support workers already have in relation to working effectively with newly arrived families? What are the gaps in expertise? Skills?
• What time and resource is currently available to support teacher development?
• Research evidence suggests that the best professional development opportunities are sustained, sensitive to teachers’ personal aspirations and facilitative of peer to peer interaction both internally and externally.
• To what extent does your school support professional development that is underpinned by these sorts of principles?
• To what extent are teachers’ development needs linked to whole school priorities?
• How do teachers access professional development?
• How is the impact of professional development understood and evaluated by teachers?

Working with your community

• How do you communicate vision and values and what are you strategies for embedding this throughout the school?
• Who are the stakeholders in your school? How are they involved in developing the vision and values of the school? How are vision and values communicated to the wider school community?
• What opportunities are there for parents and carers to be involved in the work of the school? What different sorts of roles and responsibilities do they have? Would you describe these as uni-directional or multi-directional?
• How well does this approach serve the school? What would you like to do more/less of?