​How Good is our Culture and Sport is designed to promote effective self-evaluation and support improvement. It enables practitioners to evaluate their performance and contribution to local and national outcomes and identify priorities for action. This new edition was jointly developed by VOCAL and Education Scotland. It is designed to support sports and culture organisations of all sizes, from small to large, local to national. It can also be used in cross-sector partnerships.

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How to use this self-evaluation approach to improve practice

The framework can be used in a wide range of contexts to evaluate culture and sport activity in the third sector, the voluntary sector, local authorities and national and regional organisations, membership bodies, etc. Using the HGIOCS2 framework will help organisations to understand the impact of their services and activities, evaluate their performance and identify priorities for action. It has been supported by VOCAL (the national association for culture and leisure managers) and designed by practitioners based on many years of experience in the culture and sport sector working in partnership with Education Scotland.

​HGIOCS2 helps organisations and partnerships understand what they are doing well and what they can do better. It will support your organisation to understand and improve the impact it makes. The framework supports staff and volunteers, at all levels, to become more confident with self-evaluation. You can use part or all of the resource and all of the quality indicators provide challenge questions to prompt discussion and help plan improvements. ​HGIOCS2 shares a common language with other ‘How Good Is?’ evaluation frameworks developed by Education Scotland and can also be used alongside a range of other evaluation resource.

As you look through the document you will see a number of quality indicators which focus on specific aspects of your work. They will help you identify strengths in your organisation and areas for improvement. The quality indicators will help you understand the difference you are making and what you need to do next. They are designed to support you in thinking about how well you use resources and ideas from elsewhere and to plan for coming changes. You may find it useful to use the template included in Appendix 4 which provides a way to group your responses to the challenge questions with reference to best practice, what you are currently doing and the opportunities you can identify for taking action.

Download the document

PDF file: How good is our culture and sport second edition (519 KB)