About Impact Evaluation
Evaluation expertise for New Zealand schools
Impact Evaluation was established to help schools make better use of evidence to understand what is working, what is making a difference, and where there is opportunity for improvement.
I work with schools to strengthen evaluation capability, evaluate initiatives and improvement priorities, and turn evidence into useful insights for decision-making. My approach is practical, collaborative and tailored to each school's context because evaluation is most valuable when it helps people make sense of their own situation and decide what to do next.
About Jo Thom
I bring extensive experience in education, evaluation and school improvement to my work with schools.
Before establishing Impact Evaluation, I worked for the Education Review Office (ERO) as a Review Officer and national manager of evaluation practice.
This experience gave me a deep understanding of the realities of evaluation in schools — the importance of relationships and trust, the challenges of making sense of multiple sources of evidence, and the difference between evaluation that simply produces a report and evaluation that genuinely supports improvement.
I am also completing a Doctor of Education at the University of Waikato, researching school evaluation in New Zealand. My research has further strengthened my understanding of how evaluation is experienced by school leaders and the organisational and relational conditions that influence its usefulness.
Why Impact Evaluation?
I believe evaluation should be more than a compliance exercise or another process that generates data and reports.
Good evaluation helps schools ask better questions, make sense of evidence and develop a clearer understanding of what is happening and why. It creates opportunities for professional learning, informed decision-making and purposeful improvement.
That means evaluation needs to be:
Useful — producing information that schools can actually use.
Context-responsive — recognising that every school, initiative and community is different.
Evidence-informed — drawing on appropriate and meaningful sources of evidence.
Collaborative — involving the people who understand the context and will act on the findings.
Focused on improvement — helping schools understand not just what happened, but what it means and what might happen next.
My approach
I don't believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to evaluation.
Sometimes a school needs a complete evaluation of an initiative or area of practice. Sometimes it needs help developing an evaluation question, making sense of evidence, strengthening its evaluation processes or building staff capability. And sometimes an experienced external perspective is useful to help bring clarity to an issue that feels difficult to see from within.
My role is to work alongside schools to provide the level of support that is genuinely useful while building schools' confidence and capability to use evaluation for themselves.
Whether you are considering an evaluation, wanting to strengthen your school's evaluation capability, or looking for practical support with evidence and improvement, I'd be happy to talk with you about what might be useful for your school.
Impact Evaluation — helping schools turn evidence into meaningful improvement.