CRIS

ESIS has developed a framework to support self-evaluation - the CRIS system. CRIS stands for Celebrate, Refine, Improve and Support and is a four point judgement scale that relates to the Estyn (the Office of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate for Education and Training in Wales) inspection categories.

The CRIS materials are extensive, flexible and may be used as a whole school approach to self-evaluation or as a toolkit to support specific areas of school self-evaluation. The current version, known as CRIS2 is the second version of the ESIS CRIS school self-evaluation model. It was updated in 2004 close to the last revision of the Estyn Common Inspection Framework. CRIS2 offers guidance about how to evaluate the seven key areas that encompass most activities in which schools are engaged. In CRIS2 the key areas are subdivided into elements and themes to enable specific features to be identified so that judgements about standards can be made. It is a toolkit that describes examples of good features and shortcomings. It contains a range of proformas and exemplar questionnaires presented electronically or in hard copy.

The system offers excellent opportunities for sharing judgements and helping various practitioners and school leaders to evaluate how well their school is doing. These systems will be reviewed as the School Effectiveness Framework Profile and the new Estyn Common Inspection Framework are developed and the proposed all-Wales, new, unified approaches to school self-evaluation are announced and developed from spring 2010 onwards.