Monitoring, Reviewing, Reporting

Key questions that you should be asking yourself (ves) are:

  • Are we doing what we say we do?
  • Does our performance reflect significant sustainability actions, impacts and outcomes identified from the baseline review?
  • Are our tactical and strategic approaches improving our performance?
  • Who are we reporting to and what are we reporting?
  • How credible and transparent is our reporting?
  • Should we include impartial assurance as part of the reporting process (e.g. OFSTED reports)?

Who needs to be involved?

Board members, senior management, sustainable development implementation team and/or champions. Possibly self-assessment and/or independent audit team.

Key activities

  • Collecting and evaluating objective evidence and stakeholder perception surveys or questionnaires with regards to sustainable development profile and 'performance'.
  • Assessing new opportunities for sustainable development performance improvement.
  • Selecting and training internal self-assessment team on relevant sustainable development issues.
  • Producing and communicating sustainable development progress report.
  • Regularly review and improve knowledge transfer and communication systems to ensure that key initiatives are widely replicated both within individual providers and between organisations.

Further resources to help you here include:

  • Good practice in school self-evaluation and college self-assessment. A practical guide for managers at all levels. It clarifies what self-evaluation and self-assessment are and why organisations are required to do them. This is followed by an identification of the critical success factors in self-evaluation and self-assessment. The annex contains a series of checklists and a summary of good practice.

When do these activities start?

Throughout the delivery phase and at agreed time frames, appropriate to the specific impact of the sustainability objective.

Expected outcomes

• Progress report against sustainable development strategies, tactical plans, objectives and targets.
• Recommendations for improvement in terms of sustainable development.
• Integration of key elements of sustainable development progress into organisational self-assessment report.

The review process should result in clearly communicated findings, which should form the basis for the next round of strategic and tactical planning.

Both inspection criteria and self-assessment practice in FE need to be aligned with appropriate sustainability criteria. To date the common inspection framework does not contain any specific reference to sustainable development. The performance review process described above could be integrated into the organisational self-assessment process.

The case for an integrated approach

Few organisations have yet to achieve a truly integrated approach to the issue of sustainability. Do not let this stop you from starting your journey. There will inevitably be confusion over the scope and timeframes for achieving a sustainable organisation. There will be competing and conflicting ideas and approaches. But this is part of the learning process. By adopting a systematic management framework as outlined in this section, and in conjunction with the other sections of this toolkit, it is more likely that you will achieve a more coherent and less fragmented approach to your actions and performance. Fragmented approaches tend to undermine the achievement of organisational sustainability.

There are two good case studies of an integrated approach:
The Genesis Project (CASE STUDY)
Pershore Group of Colleges (CASE STUDY)


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