Evaluation of Heads Together (2006)

Screenshot of the Heads Together online community login page

Heads Together is an established online community giving Scottish headteachers the opportunity to meet in a secure environment to discuss issues, share best practice and debate with policy makers. A pilot of Heads Together took place in 2002, and was evaluated by George Street Research, before the community was formally launched in 2003.

This evaluation of Heads Together was undertaken by George Street Research from April to November 2006.

Evaluation aim

The aim of the evaluation was to provide information on the progress and impact of Heads Together, in order to help identify further effective uses of ICT in supporting and enhancing the professionalism of Scottish headteachers, and other potential client groups.

Research method

A two-stage methodology was adopted for the evaluation of Heads Together. The first stage involved 36 interviews, which aimed to investigate perceptions of the community among participants and other key stakeholders, in five local authority areas. Stage two of the evaluation involved 300 telephone interviews with Heads Together participants, and aimed to further explore the issues raised in Stage One across all 32 local authority areas in Scotland. These telephone interviews were conducted using a quota system, to ensure that participants with different usage levels of Heads Together, and from early years, primary and secondary education, were involved.

Key findings

Awareness and usage:

96% of respondents had used Heads Together since their initial training (this usage rate was higher than the level recorded for the pilot).
There was a move to a more purposive use of Heads Together but the majority of respondents still used the site to browse for information rather than taking part in discussions.
Usage levels for most elements of the site had increased since the pilot evaluation and there was a higher level of integration of use during the working day than was found in the pilot evaluation.
A key barrier to usage was a lack of time, although this was often related to time management and prioritisation.
Usage of the service compared favourably with National College for School Leadership established norms for online community participation.

Educational benefits and impact:

68% of respondents agreed that the service helped them to improve their management skills.
66% of respondents believed the online community had saved them time in performing their job and the greater the usage, the greater this benefit was realised.
95% of respondents agreed that the online community is a valuable support and advice tool.
93% of respondents agreed that the service is a useful way of bringing headteachers together across Scotland and 65% agreed that Heads Together had reduced their feelings of isolation.
Further benefits identified included: support for headteachers in their day-to-day role and raised awareness of the role of ICT in management, administration and teaching.
Views on facilitation and Learning and Teaching Scotland’s management of the service were very positive.

Continued development:

A majority of respondents were supportive to opening up the community to other groups, especially depute headteachers.

Recommendations

Learning and Teaching Scotland should develop a strategy for promoting the service.
It is important that Learning and Teaching Scotland facilitators and staff working on Heads Together develop and maintain good working relationships with local authority staff to ensure that this channel is utilised effectively to encourage awareness and use of the different elements of the service.
Key messages need to be disseminated to participants to help overcome barriers to access or usage. This is of particular relevance to low or non users who may be unaware of changes and updates to the community.
There is need for facilitators to continue to pro-actively contact participants in order to help raise awareness of what is available and to encourage increased usage levels.
Opening up Heads Together to other groups, such as depute headteachers, should be considered; however, discussion areas should remain open only to headteachers.

Full report

Please contact the Research team (research@LTScotland.org.uk) for copies of the full report.