School Self Evaluation / DEIS
St. Vincent's Secondary School is a DEIS school. Below you will find information on our DEIS targets and SSE initiatives.
What is SSE?
School self-evaluation empowers a school community to identify and affirm good practice, and to identify and take action on areas that merit improvement. School self-evaluation is primarily about schools taking ownership of their own development and improvement.
In St Vincent’s we have been actively engaged in the SSE process since 2014 beginning with Literacy, then numeracy, e-learning and this year we are focusing on homework. We are also planning for next year, the strand we will focus on is the Junior Cycle.
School self-evaluation further develops the school development planning process, and focuses it firmly on teaching and learning.
We meet weekly to plan, review, evaluate and update our practice.
SSE Team
Principal M. Quinn
Deputy Principal Mr. McCann
Frank Kieran
James Hanrahan
Eamonn Connolly
Elaine McLoughlin (SSE Co-ordinator)
Sinitta Flood
Jason Campbell
Current strand: Homework
This year we are looking at ways we can improve how students engage with Homework. Based on recent inspections homework was an area identified as in need of improvement. We surveyed students, parents and staff to get a better understanding of how much homework was being given and how much students were engaging with it.
We then worked on creating a 10 step routine for each class that would place more of an emphasis on homework. We also redesigned the homework journal to raise the profile of homework in St. Vincent’s.
We put more stringent sanctions in place to help us identify students who are avoiding homework across several subjects. This allowed us to work with those students.
While also working on improving homework we are preparing this year for next years strand of the New Junior Cycle. We are currently collecting data by surveying students, parents and staff to get a better understanding of how much we know and what we need to prioritise for next year.
DEIS
Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools (DEIS):
Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools (DEIS) the Action Plan for Educational Inclusion, was launched in May 2005 and remains the Department of Education and Skills policy instrument to address educational disadvantage. The action plan focuses on addressing and prioritising the educational needs of children and young people from disadvantaged communities, from pre-school through second-level education (3 to 18 years).
In St. Vincent’s our DEIS/ SSE team meet weekly to work on the targets we have set out in our Three Year Plan (See School Website). The plan is broken down into the eight strands of DEIS: Retention, Attendance, Literacy, Numeracy, Attainment, Progression, Partnership with Parents and Partnership with Others.
Under each stand we, as a school, have set targets that we are working to achieve. In order to achieve these targets in each area we have a number of actions in place.
These actions are monitored closely and evaluated annually. All of our strands also encompass Wellbeing, Continuous Professional Development and Leadership.
The staff in St. Vincent’s are committed to delivering the best teaching and learning possible and this is reflected through their engagement with the DEIS targets and participation in the actions. It is the responsibility of all our staff members to work together to provide equality of opportunity to all.