Evaluating the activity

What the standard means by evaluate

• The standard defines it: measuring the performance of the business activity in relation to desired economic, social, cultural (including ethical) and environmental outcomes.
• Three things follow from that definition, and each is a place students lose marks:
  • Measuring — numbers, from records, not impressions.
  • In relation to desired outcomes — you are comparing against what you intended, so the targets you set at planning are the standard you are judged against.
  • All four outcomes — an evaluation that reports the surplus and mentions that everyone enjoyed it has evaluated one and a quarter.

The structure of a thorough evaluation

• 1. Restate what was intended. For each outcome: the measure, the baseline and the target from the plan.
• 2. Report what happened. The actual figure for each measure, with the source.
• 3. Explain the gap. For each outcome, why the result was above, below or at target. This is the analysis, and it is where the marks are.
• 4. Weigh the outcomes against each other. Which trade-offs were accepted, why, and whether they were worth it.
• 5. Judge the activity overall. Was it successful? Against which outcome? Would it be worth doing again, and what would you change?
• 6. Say what you learned about the business knowledge, because the standard requires business knowledge to be integrated to fully support explanations at Excellence.

Reporting the four outcomes

• Use the table from the plan and fill in the last column:

Outcome	Measure	Baseline	Target	Actual	Result
Economic	Surplus after all costs	$0	$400	$312	78% of target
Social	Students trained in food handling	0	8	11	Exceeded
Cultural	Suppliers paid within 7 days	n/a	100%	100%	Met
Environmental	Produce diverted from waste	0	120 kg	168 kg	Exceeded

• (Invented activity, illustrative figures.)
• Then explain each. The surplus example: "The surplus fell short of target because the compostable trays cost $0.22 more per unit than the plan allowed, which reduced the surplus by about $90 across 410 units. That decision was made deliberately after consulting the council's waste minimisation officer, and it is the main reason the environmental outcome exceeded its target while the economic one did not."
• That sentence is what a thorough evaluation looks like. It measures, it explains, it links two outcomes to each other, and it takes responsibility for the choice.

Judging honestly

• The most common weakness in these evaluations is that they are too positive.
• A thorough evaluation:
  • Says what did not work, and why, without excuses.
  • Distinguishes what you controlled from what you did not. A wet market day is not a planning failure; not having a wet-weather plan is.
  • Questions its own measures. "Kilograms diverted is a good measure of what we saved from waste, but it does not account for the packaging we added, so our net environmental effect is smaller than the figure suggests."
  • Separates luck from judgement. An activity that succeeded for a reason you did not plan should say so.
  • Names what you would do differently, specifically, with a reason.
• A frank evaluation of a partly unsuccessful activity marks higher than a glowing evaluation of a successful one. The standard is assessing your evaluation, not your business.

Consulting on the evaluation

• Take your conclusions back to at least one advisor. Ask whether your measures were the right ones and whether your judgement of the result is fair.
• It is genuine consultation, it usually improves the evaluation, and it is the easiest way to demonstrate that consultation ran across the whole activity rather than being a single meeting at the start.