The integral part of school’s development and quality of study are the feedback and evaluation received from students.
At the SNDO these are structured in formal and informal ways. The informal chit-chats in the food line in the cantina, feedback given to mentor during the mentor hour, discussions with the artistic director during the Friday Afternoon sessions dedicated to the programme or meetings with each year group, all the way up to the official evaluations being filled in and filed in different dossiers. They all matter.
The different conversations, though having the most significant impact, have the least visible form. The more visible ones are the formal evaluations. Hereby the line-up of the latter:
NSE - National Students Enquête
NSE applies to all schools across the Netherlands. The results are used to rank the schools across the country for the quality of education as evaluated by the student population. These results are then published and serve to tell future students and their parents/guardians 'these are good schools'.
In the publications these results are not naming specifically SNDO, rather all Dance BA or MA as clusters are mentioned.
SNDO specific data is made available to artistic director and the directorate of the Academy.
NSE is conducted every year and students receive the enquête link directly to their ahk.nl inbox.
Course evaluations (in Dutch: Vakevaluaties).
Every year the SNDO team has to choose several courses or programme elements to be evaluated by each study year.
For this students receive the link directly in their ahk.nl inbox. These sessions usually take place within mentor hour. The processed results reach the artistic director in the form of data documents. The artistic director follows these up with teachers with a conversation for improvement trajectory or in case of repeated negative assessments to termination of a course. Likewise, the positive results are also shared and celebrated with the teachers.
4th year evaluating complete study programme
At the end of the fourth year study, usually in the last week SNDO 4 is evaluating the whole programme. ATD Quality and Policy advisor David Dotulung conducts this evaluation. It consists of graduates filling in a questionnaire focussing on strengths and weaknesses.
Immediately after filling in the form the Quality and Policy advisor is conducting a talk with the graduating group where students can further elaborate and contextualize their observations and evaluation. Quality and Policy advisor process’s these results, they reach the artistic director in the form of data charts as well as the written report of the talk.
These data and documents are the primary platform for evaluating the standard and quality of SNDO education in a talk between the artistic director and the general director of the ATD. For any of these evaluations is it therefor important that all students participate. At SNDO one studies in small classes, so with one or two people missing a significant percentage of input is missing.