Self Review

At the Group Scout Leader’s conference I went to last year, one of the things talked about was a self review form that had been trialled and was likely to be rolled out across the country. I brought it back with me and thought  it was a good idea.

However, I kind of forgot about it and it sat on my ‘to do pile’. Then a month or so ago, it was given out to all the District’s Group Scout Leaders as it is being fully rolled out. Each Group needs to work through it and then we are having a meeting about it in November (I think).

Its official title is the Scout Group Development Planning Traffic Toolkit! There are 15 sections and each has various criteria. If the ideal criteria is met, you score ‘Green’, if you are close to the ideal but need some work, you score ‘Amber’ and if there is a lot of work to do, you score ‘Red’. Once you’ve gone through all the sections, you again score green, amber or red.

Yesterday and today I’ve been working on it, and I must admit I had good idea of what our overall score would be. And I was right – amber.

To be honest, I’m quite happy with this result as it shows that we as a Group are doing a lot of things right and there are some things where we need to improve. So i need to write up my reasons for the scores, this is so I can show my reasoning to the other Leaders and the Group Executive, and write an action plan. The action plan will be a draft version again so the other Leaders and Executive can add their ideas as well.

By doing all this, I hope this will enable us to provide better Scouting for all the young people in the Group. I’m glad of this opportunity to do this as it gives us some idea of where we are and where we need to be. Although I’d like to think we’re perfect(!), this does prove that although we are doing some thing properly, we need to address others.

I’ve put a copy of the form here so if anyone is interested they can read it.

Does anyone else, in the UK or elsewhere, do anything similar?

3 Replies to “Self Review”

  1. Hey Nick

    You will find this is done at every level, or at least is should be done. I know that we do it a county level and encourage districts to do it as well as groups.
    It is interesting if you can get a copy of the over all district or county analysis to see how your group compares to those higher views.

    YIS
    C

  2. Interesting! I’ve heard of something similar, but not that it’s done by everyone. We’ve been talking for a while about getting better at mapping out our direction and this seems a good tool.

    Now back from a great camp week, and feel rested and inspired. Still got a couple of days before I have to go back to boring, old work…

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