Our Services
School Climate Suite®: Assessing School Climate
NSI’s Program: Psychometrically Sound Instruments to Inform School Improvement Efforts
NSI's School Climate Suite®: Features and Benefits
Comprehensive assessment of School Climate
Validated Instruments
Availability of paper copies
Comprehensive Reports
Flexible Administration
Appreciating Context
Monitoring Improvement Efforts
Ongoing Support
NSI’s School Climate Suite®
Our School Climate Suite® is comprised of research-based, robust, reliable, and empirically validated instruments designed to assess the perceptions of school members essential to the educative process: staff, teachers, students and parents/caregivers. The constructs measured are strong indicators of important outcomes and support educational change efforts.
We are passionate about the inclusivity of schooling communities and the integral nature of positive school climates in school improvement efforts. Our School Climate Suite®:
- Considers the multidimensionality of the school climate.
- Assesses malleable aspects of the school climate.
- Is evidenced by strong psychometric properties.
- Provides progress data to monitor school improvement efforts.
- Use response formats developed to suit different stakeholders.
- Assesses the fit (or mis-fit) of the actual and preferred environment, enabling effective and reliable prioritisation of improvement efforts.
- Can be administered online, with paper copies, or both.
A summary of the Features and Benefits of the NSI’s School Climate Suite can be downloaded here
What NSI's School Climate Suite® Measures
NSI’s School Climate Suite® assesses the views of students, staff and parents. Each instrument provides comprehensive coverage of malleable aspects of the school climate across four broad categories:
- Community (quality of interpersonal relationships within the school).
- Safety (quality of the physical and emotional security provided by the school).
- Academic atmosphere (quality of the academic support including instruction, teacher training and professional development).
- Institutional environment (organisational features of the school environment, including school connectedness and affirming cultural diversity).
Student Voice
Instruments are available to assess students’ views of the school climate in:
- Early Childhood (pre-primary to year 2).
- Primary School (years 3 to 6).
- Secondary School (years 7 to 12).
In addition to a comprehensive measure of the school climate, a range of validated protective and risk factors measures are available. Included are constructs to assess:
- Protective factors (those supporting student adaptive functioning), such as resilience and moral identity, (commitment to lines of action that promote the welfare of others).
- Risk factors (those that may jeopardise students’ psychosocial development), such as classroom behaviour and emotional disaffection, (withdrawal or alienation from learning activities).
Staff Voice
Instruments are available to assess the views of:
- Teaching Staff
- Support Staff
In addition to school climate factors, constructs related to staff outcomes, such as job satisfaction, wellbeing and teaching efficacy, are available.
Parent and Caregiver Voice
The engagement of families in the learning process is critical to optimising the student learning experience and building positive school climates. Our parent and caregiver instrument provides a manageable, inclusive and reliable means of collecting quality data from parents and caregivers.
This instrument includes constructs to assess parents and caregivers’:
- Views of their child’s experiences at the school (e.g., whether they feel staff are caring and respectful of their child).
- Own school experiences (e.g., whether they feel welcome at the school).
- Satisfaction with the school (e.g., whether they are satisfied with what the school does for their child) and their goals and aspirations.
NSI Feedback Reports
Our comprehensive feedback reports are designed to provide schools with an in-depth understanding of the school’s climate. Fit-for-purpose, easy-to-read graphical profiles are used to represent the responses of school members in meaningful ways.
Executive Summary Reports
NSI’s Executive Summary Reports are prepared following an in-depth analysis of school-level and system-level feedback reports. The Executive Summary Reports identify areas of strength and opportunities for growth and provide recommendations for potential focus. Where requested, these reports are accompanied by an interactive session to assist in the analysis and use of the data. These sessions, facilitated by one of our experts, promote rich, collaborative discussions. |
NSI Five-Step School Improvement Process
NSI’s Five-Step School Improvement process involves an evidence-based, cyclical process of reflection with a focus on stakeholder voice and data-informed decision-making. This approach promotes sustainable improvement and provides a practical means of informing, evaluating and monitoring improvement efforts.
Reflection and focusing
Planning an intervention
Implementing cycles of intervention
Describing and preliminary analysis
Re-administering the instrument to assess the changes
