The Department has strengthened their internal evaluation capacity through a comprehensive system. Launched in early 2021, the Evaluation Practice now employs over 20 staff and has achieved considerable successes.
For example, the Evaluation Practice team have led nine large-scale evaluations, synthesised sense-making and cross-initiative insights at the system level, enabled greater access and use of internal DET data to ensure more robust findings, influenced state-administered education surveys to further increase the quality of data available, and ensured appropriate resourcing are provided to evaluation across the agency.
This provides a good model of an internal capacity building system which could provide practical examples for other agencies and organisations.