View from the classroom
The software’s self-evaluation module ensures the school’s data is current, live and accurate. It can also be accessed immediately by middle and senior leaders, so encouraging them to play an active role in self-evaluation exercises. Implementation of the solution across all the schools will give the Executive Headteacher and Director an accurate overview of the whole Trust, whilst maintaining appropriate access for other colleagues.
Benefits and results
By analysing the quality of teaching across Polesworth, we can identify strengths and weaknesses and target CPD effectively, clearly linking it to individual or collective needs. We are now delivering in-house tightly-focused CPD that really makes a difference. For example, staff completing their online review documents must rate their questioning skills using an A, B, C or D marking system. Those who have the confidence to give their students time to reflect before answering a question typically rank themselves an A. Those less able often rate themselves a C or a D, so it is easy to identify which members of staff need extra help with developing their skills. Confident A-rated staff are then called upon to share their best practice at in-house professional learning sessions, so helping all to develop professionally. It is interesting to see that this in-house training is viewed by our staff as ‘more worthy and credible’ because they have witnessed the effectiveness of their peers operating within the classroom.
The solution
Having reviewed a range of solutions, designed to reduce the burden of performance management, we settled upon BlueSky Education because it provided the tools required to implement, manage and track a clear, consistent and robust appraisal policy, linked to school improvement priorities. BlueSky, creators of the software, offered the complete solution covering reviews, objective setting, CPD, lesson observations, work scrutiny, learning walks and self-evaluation. BlueSky Education enables us to capture all the data we need to measure the quality of teaching effectively and accurately focus resources where they will have the most impact. I can review appraisal objectives across the teams quickly, ensuring individual objectives are contributing to whole-school improvement priorities. Our staff are confident that the appraisal process is rigorous, transparent fair and confidential.
January 2015
BlueSky, Premier Partner for Performance Management for the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) recently announced the findings of its delegates’ survey conducted at the ASCL Conference on performance management, performance-related pay and continuing professional development (CPD). Here are the facts and figures: 55.1% of Senior Leadership Teams (SLTs) said that they believed ‘they had effective performance management procedures in place for performance-related pay decisions’ – the first awards for which take place this Sept. 39.8% said they were ‘mostly ready’ and 5.1% said that there was ‘still work to be done’.
The survey also shed light on the various methods employed by UK schools to manage the staff performance process - 24.1% said that they used ‘a paper-based system’, 20.3% ‘in-house spreadsheets’, 32.3% ‘a combination of the two’ and, only 23.3% ‘software developed for this express purpose’.
When asked how the expertise of their most effective teachers is shared, across the school, 62% said ‘through peer coaching and mentoring’, 25.7% ‘using an observation timetable’, 8.8% ‘through an experts’ database’ and 3.4% said ‘they do not do this formally’.
www.education-today.co.uk 21 Cost savings
Sharing best practice in this way has enabled us to save money. External courses, typically attended by just one member of staff, are now few and far between and instead have been replaced with a comprehensive in-house professional learning programme. The money we save means we can afford to bring in high-quality trainers - for example, a lead Ofsted inspector - to deliver whole school CPD that benefits everyone. Most importantly, we are now able to use our £40K CPD budget more effectively and today I have the funds to pay for staff to take Masters Degrees at Warwick University and to enroll senior and middle management staff on national professional qualification courses run by HTI. BlueSky has enabled us to make SMARTER decisions.
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The reporting tool within the self-evaluation module accurately pinpoints trends and outcomes to inform whole school planning. We can clearly demonstrate that self-evaluation is positively impacting on pupil progress and achievement. For example, by conducting learning walks, we can gather evidence about how the school is performing on a daily basis and when we eventually get the call from Ofsted, we know we will have the evidence that backs up the outstanding qualities of the school.
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